The 2026 Global Intergenerational Congress, organized by Scotland’s centre of excellence supporting intergenerational work, Generations Working Together, was an event that brought together diverse intergenerational stakeholders from around the globe, from experts with lived experiences to community groups, decisionmakers, practitioners, and researchers. Around 150 delegates from eighteen different countries were in attendance.
The event was held at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow from the 29 September to the 1 October with a full programme of sessions, from keynote speeches to stories from the field and participatory workshops. Civic receptions, including a ‘Hootenanny’ to celebrate the winners of the Excellence Awards 2026, offered an opportunity to explore the range of intergenerational approaches and programmes underway across Scotland and further afield.
Our team currently delivering the Changing Intergenerational Relationships project (CIR), based at the University of Stirling and directed by Dr. Elaine Douglas, was in attendance to present two participatory workshops allowing delegates to engage with innovative research findings and diverse intergenerational voices from our regional case study.
Our Workshops
The first workshop, delivered by Dr. Heather Emond, explored ‘Intergenerational Living and Cultures of Care Across Families and Communities’ and took a closer look at how intergenerational relationships and cultural expectations of care can relate to patterns of living and housing across different generations. Through presentations and group discussions, we explored the joys and benefits, as well as tensions and issues, that can arise in intergenerational living.
The workshop closed with a question-and-answer session with a panel of experts sharing their views and experiences around influencing housing policy, practice, and research. Our research team was joined by members from Falkirk Council’s groundbreaking Youth Housing Forum, and two of our community peer researchers, Michelle and Obaid, involved in co-producing our research project.
From breaking down barriers to participation to creating sustained momentum for ongoing policy change, this panel was the highlight of the workshop and demonstrated the importance of both youth leadership and policy innovation, which were key themes of the 2026 gathering.
As one panel member, Bryony O’Donnell, commented “What an amazing experience to be invited to speak at an event that values the voice of everyone as much as our little group does. It was a great opportunity to speak to likeminded people about how to bring about real change in policy and procedures. It made me feel that no matter how small of a difference we are making, people like us are doing the same all over the world, which promises something much bigger than ourselves.”
The second workshop, led by Dr. Cate Pemble, shifted the focus to our research exploring intergenerational experiences and perceptions of changing working practices, from remote working and digital technology to intergenerational management dynamics and social preferences in multigenerational workplaces. The workshop focused on an interactive vignette-based activity that allowed participants to consider different generational perspectives in workplace scenarios developed from real lived experiences collected over the course of our case study.
Congress 2026 was a unique opportunity to share our research and engage in knowledge exchange in an international forum of diverse stakeholders involved in intergenerational work. New connections were made to sustain our project’s ongoing focus on translating our findings into real-world impacts and resources that can benefit communities both in Scotland and internationally, and advancing research in the field of intergenerational relationships.
Finding Out More
The CIR project is part of the Connecting Generations programme based at the Centre for Population Change and funded by the UKRI Economic and Social Research Council. Our research explores intergenerational relationships across four areas of social change, including working practices, housing and communities, digital access and exclusion, and access to health and social care. To find out more about our work, please contact the team: CIR@stir.ac.uk.