The 15 substantive chapters in this volume represent roughly half of the projects in the New Dynamics of Ageing (NDA) programme, while its twin volume contains the other half (Walker, 2018: forthcoming). Both were preceded by a pathbreaking collection that engaged all of the programme's projects in multi-disciplinary analyses of six themes that are central to any informed discussion of the future of ageing (Walker, 2014). That seminal collection was tagged as the ‘new science of ageing’ because the NDA programme represented a major investment in the new era of multidisciplinary research on ageing. The 57 co-authors of that book provide an excellent example of that multidisciplinarity at work. They applied it to the understanding of ageing; the roles of arts and design in transforming the experience of ageing; healthy ageing; food and nutrition; and participation and social connectivity. In doing so, they recognised that ageing and old age cannot be comprehensively understood from any one disciplinary perspective. This does not mean that only multidisciplinary research matters – far from it, as each discipline has unique contributions to make – but these must be combined in order to gain maximum insights into the meaning of ageing and the challenges if presents.

This volume and its twin are different from the first book. Here we have separated the various NDA projects into individual chapters so that the specific contributions of each of them can be highlighted. A majority of the projects were themselves multidisciplinary, so that approach runs consistently through each volume. As pointed out in Chapter One, the parcelling of the chapters into sub-themes was purely a function of the complexion of the final programme. Although the NDA was set up with key research topics highlighted, because of the peer review process there was no guarantee that all of them would be part of the final programme. As it happens, there is rough correspondence between the original programme specification and the final group of projects that were funded. Broad groups of projects are represented thematically, in this volume covering active and healthy ageing, designing for an older population and global ageing, while the twin volume covers autonomy and independence, biological perspectives, nutrition and representations of old age.