Our Values
Our Values
The mission of the Institute for Lifecourse and Society (ILAS) is to contribute scientific and practical awareness of human capacity and potential across the life course, thereby impacting positively on knowledge, attitudes, policy and practice, internationally.
It is through this mission that ILAS aims to enable equity across the life course for individuals and groups. The Institute’s mission and aim integrates and advance the objectives of ILAS’s constituent centres and units. They also allow ILAS to advance the respective goals of its affiliated Colleges – the College of Arts, Social Sciences and Celtic Studies and the College of Business, Public Policy and Law – and their concern with global impact and producing solutions to complex challenges for the public good.
The strategic goals of the Institute for Lifecourse and Society (ILAS) are to enhance equity across the life course through impact oriented community engagement and policy influence, research excellence, research led innovation in teaching and learning, and leadership towards maximised collaboration.
An Institute with a world-class reputation that contributes to the creation of positive public policy across the life course through scholarship and educational programmes that form the next generation of change agents and that actively engage the public it serves. The life course is an appropriate paradigm to analyse and evaluate capacities, vulnerabilities and system constraints with a view to formulating new narratives that help to inform more integrated discourse and public policy in respect of a range of population groups including children and families, older people and people with disabilities.
Five core values provide the philosophical orientation for ILAS. These are:
- Committing to passionate scholarship based on principles of social justice and social inclusion
- Valuing human potential and capability through the adoption of strengths-based perspectives
- Acknowledging each individual’s right to autonomy, self-determination and, as needed, support to attain their full potential
- Maintaining a focus on the person and their communities as the focal point for policies and practices
- Recognizing the inter-dependency of people’s lives and the importance of social and community engagement as a means of advancing humanity
