D I S T A N C E S

Ageing Society in Italy and Japan:

A Multidisciplinary Workshop

distanceS in thE Covid-19 era

Online event

November 13-14, 2020

In the past decade, the crucial issue of the dynamic social and economic impact of an aging society (namely, the increase in longevity versus the fall in fertility in a population) has been the so-called digital divide, or the uneven distribution in the access to, use of, or impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Most research on this topic has addressed reducing the intergenerational gap, influencing the growth of educational programs for the elderly and the production of dedicated user interfaces. However, the recent g lobal Covid-19 pandemic has shown an acceleration in the reduction of the digital divide, allowing for the mitigation of imposed physical distances through an increase in the use of ICT. Within this scenario, the dynamic interplay between physical and virtual distances has assumed new forms, forcing innovative cross-disciplinary attitudes to develop as well as the design of new perspectives for the future of research.

This workshop, which focuses on Japan and Italy, the two countries that top the list of aging populations, combines multidisciplinary research to discuss the notion of distance due to the recent experience of the pandemic. The workshop gathers schol ars and experts from different disciplines and aims to converge their knowledge on the common discussion platform of how the perception of distance is addressing new research trends in scientific and humanistic studies.