Philip B. Stafford

Phil directs the Center on Aging and Community at the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community, at Indiana University in Bloomington. A cultural anthropologist, Phil has been active in research, training, speaking and publishing around issues of community development for elder-friendly communities for three decades. He is a senior consultant with the AdvantAge Initiative, a national project that has supported community planning for aging in over 26 U.S communities and recently completed an Administration on Aging-funded statewide demonstration planning grant for the Indiana Division of Aging. Currently he provides technical assistance to 14 grantees participating in the U.S. Administration on Aging Community Innovations for Aging in Place initiative. He is a founding board member of the Memory Bridge Foundation and the author of numerous articles on culture and dementia, participatory research and planning and the meaning of home for older people. He is the editor of a Gray Areas: Ethnographic Encounters with Nursing Home Culture, 2003, SAR Press. His new book entitled Elderburbia: Aging with a Sense of Place in America, was published by Praeger Press in October, 2009. Phil received his BA from the University of Chicago, and his Ph.D. from Indiana University.