Phillip Stafford


Adjunct Professor
Dept. of Anthropology, Indiana University

Biography


Phil is the retired Director of the Center on Aging and Community at the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community and a cultural anthropologist, with a BA from the University of Chicago and Ph.D. from Indiana University. For forty years, Phil has focused his efforts on the creation of age and ability friendly communities. He has consulted and published widely on the relationship between aging and place, with publications including Gray Areas:Ethnographic Encounters with Nursing Home Culture (2003), Elderburbia: Aging with a Sense of Place in America (2009), and The Global Age-Friendly Community Movement: A Critical Perspective (2018). He has received the Walter S. Blackburn Award from the Indiana Chapter of the AIA for contributions to the field by a non-architect and the Ageless America award from Partners for Livable Communities.

Phil is a member of the board of the International Making Cities Livable conference, the Memory Bridge Foundation, and past president of the Association for Anthropology and Gerontology. Currently a board member of the American Society on Aging, Phil is a past board president of Bloomington Meals on Wheels, is Vice President of the board of the Monroe County History Center and chairs the Bloomington Commission on Aging. He has lived in Bloomington since 1978, coming for graduate school and deciding to stay.