Aging Observatory operates as both a research practice and a growing intelligence infrastructure.
Our work unfolds across three interrelated layers:
Longitudinal Research Pilots
Focused studies on key themes shaping midlife transitions, including work and retirement, housing, caregiving, financial transfer, technology, and identity. Each pilot builds a body of structured qualitative knowledge that can inform policy, design, and capital allocation.
Integration Framework (NEEM™)
A structured method for coding and comparing qualitative data across cohorts, geographies, and time, enabling pattern recognition without reducing people to categories.
Intelligence Platform
An AI-assisted environment designed to organize and map ethnographic data longitudinally. Currently in prototype phase, supporting the Work & Retirement pilot.
It does not generate insights automatically. It supports researchers and institutions in tracing how needs, behaviors, and meanings evolve across life stages.
Over time, this creates a cumulative knowledge infrastructure, one that grows more valuable as it expands.
Current Work
Work & Retirement Pilot | Torino, Italy
The first research pilot examines how adults aged 45–60 in post-industrial Torino navigate forced early retirement, career reinvention, and the search for purpose as manufacturing employment contracts.
Torino, once defined by automotive manufacturing, is now experiencing profound economic restructuring. The 45–60 generation entered careers expecting stable industrial employment. Today, they face layoffs disguised as early retirement, skill obsolescence, financial precarity, and the challenge of reconstructing identity after work.
This work documents patterns relevant across post-industrial cities, from Detroit to Sheffield to Lille.
Timeline: 3–6 months
Participants: 10–12 adults aged 45–60
Status: Fieldwork in progress
Outputs include:
Public research brief
Career journey personas
Retirement decision frameworks
Identity transition maps
Webinar