Lara Pivodic will discuss the critical roles of time and change in palliative care and the end-of-life research, highlighting the necessity for high-quality longitudinal data. Her talk will explore key insights regarding end-of-life trajectories, reflect on existing approaches to studying these paths, and present the ERC-funded project TRAJECT, which seeks to re-shape how we examine, understand, and categorise older people’s end-of-life trajectories.

Lara is a Research Professor at the End-of-Life Care Research Group of Vrije Universiteit Brussel & Ghent University. Situated at the intersection of medical and social sciences, Lara’s work covers topics related to ageing, the end of life and death, including epidemiological studies, policy analyses and clinical studies. She is the recipient of an ERC Starting Grant for the project TRAJECT, which seeks to re-shape our understanding of older people's end-of-life trajectories, combining quantitative epidemiological and qualitative narrative research. Her previous research grants include an EU-funded Marie Curie PhD scholarship, Postdoctoral Fellowships of the Research Foundation-Flanders and a Postdoctoral Fellowship of the AXA Research Fund. Lara holds a PhD in Medical Sciences from Vrije Universiteit Brussel and an MSc in Psychology from the University of Vienna. She is a member of the Jonge Academie (Young Academy of Sciences) of Belgium.