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Heidrun Mollenkopf

Heidrun Mollenkopf

President, AGE Platform Europe

Heidrun Mollenkopf is President of AGE Platform Europe, the European network of non-profit organisations of and for older people, and Board Member of BAGSO, the German National Association of Senior Citizens' Organisations.

Heidrun Mollenkopf is a sociologist and gerontologist. She was Senior Researcher at the German Centre for Research on Ageing (DZFA) at the University of Heidelberg until she retired in December 2004. Her main research focus was the interplay among personal, societal, technical, and environmental conditions regarding quality of life in old age. She has pursued this interest in several large-scale research projects on technology and ageing and on the outdoor mobility of older people, first at the University of Mannheim, then at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB) and the Free University of Berlin, and finally at the former DZFA. In addition, she worked as a lecturer at several universities in Germany and Switzerland and served as a consultant and evaluator in several European bodies of experts, supporting the wishes, needs and interests of older persons.

2007-2014, Heidrun Mollenkopf was member of the German National Association of Senior Citizens' Organisations (BAGSO) Expert Council and Chair of the “Universal Access and Independent Living” Expert Group of AGE Platform Europe. Since 2014, she is Board Member of BAGSO. In 2012, she received the Order of Merits of the Federal Republic of Germany for her commitment to improving the living conditions of older persons, and since 2016, she represents BAGSO regularly at the Open-Ended Working Group on Ageing at the United Nations in New York (UN OEWG-A).

At about the same time - from 2015 until 2021 - Heidrun Mollenkopf was Vice President of AGE Platform Europe. In 2023, she was elected President of AGE.

Besides, she has been appointed to the office of the Standing Working Group on Ageing (SWGA) at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) in Geneva as the representative of civil society in 2019.