Dear Action Participants,

Midway through our third grant period (GP3), we have many exciting developments to share:

The 2nd Training School

The 2nd Annual LeverAge Training School was held at the Faculty of Sociology and Communication in the Transilvania University of Brasov on March 19 & 20, 2026. The event was organized by Dr. Horia Moasa, Dean of the Faculty of Sociology and Communication at the Transilvania University of Brasov. Three trainers and 11 trainees, from 10 different countries participated in the Training School. Topics covered conducting comparative cross-national or cross-cultural research, using AI for research, conducting systematic reviews, and building research collaborations and brainstorming new research ideas.

The feedback was very positive, highlighting the importance of building our junior network members’ capacity for conducting impactful research and building lasting collaborations.

You can find out more here.

LeverAge Working Group (WG) 1-5 3rd Annual Meetings & WG Interplenary

The LeverAge Working Group (WG) 1-5 3rd Annual Meetings & WG Interplenary was held at the University of Birmingham on May 21 & 22, 2026. The event was organized by Dr. De Glykeria Skamagki from the School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Birmingham. It was heavily attended, drawing 77 participants from 31 countries.

The first day was dedicated to focused meetings within the five working groups. It was an ideal opportunity to welcome new members, introduce their research projects, and reflect on the current progress of ongoing initiatives. The groups also identified new research challenges relevant to aging, work, and retirement, setting the stage for future innovation and collaboration. The day also featured several parallel workshops. Coffee breaks and shared meals offered valuable moments for networking, idea exchange, and planning future collaborations.

The feedback was extremely positive, highlighting the importance of renewed connections and conducting impactful research together.

You can read more about the event and watch a video here.

Leadership Rotations

Dr. Raphael Eppler-Hattab from the University of Haifa (Israel) stepped down as WG 3 Leader; Prof. Dr. Sara Zaniboni from the Polytechnic University Milan (Italy) stepped down as WG 5

They are replaced by Dr. Susana Schmitz from Europeia University (Portugal) as WG 3 Leader and who subsequently stepped down as WG 3 Vice Leader; Dr. Oriana de Saint Priest from the Singapore Management University (Singapore) as WG 3 Vice Leader; Dr. Heike Schröder-Altmann from Queen’s University Belfast (Ireland) as WG 5 Leader and who subsequently stepped down as WG 5 Vice Leader; Dr. Luca Fazi from the University of Bologna as WG 5 Vice Leader.

We thank all our colleagues in the Action leadership for their tireless and dedicated service over these last few years and we wish them all the very best over the upcoming period! A full listing of the COST Action LeverAge leadership team is available here.

Network Growth

As of this writing, COST Action LeverAge counts 299 participants from 60 countries! This participant count is approximately 15% higher than at the fourth quarter of GP2 and includes representatives from 1 new country (Georgia).

Dissemination and Impact

COST Action LeverAge was represented in six major conferences this year:

1. Dr. Justin Marcus presented on the activities of COST Action LeverAge as an invited speaker at the Future of Work conference that was held at the L’Institut de Recherche en Gestion, Université Paris-Est (University Paris East) in Paris, France (March 2026), and as a speaker at an Ignite symposium session held at the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology annual conference, in New Orleans, Louisiana (April 2026).
2. Two LeverAge symposia were featured at the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology (EAOHP) in Helsinki, Finland (June 2026):
   • The LeverAge symposium: Diversity and Inclusion in the Multi-age Workforce, chaired by Dr. Inês Carneiro e Sousa and Dr. Daniela Andrei.
   • The LeverAge symposium: Successful aging in the workplace, chaired by Prof. Dr. Ilke Inceoglu and Prof. Dr. Susanne Scheibe.
3. Dr. Tabea Wolf presented on the activities of COST Action LeverAge as part of a symposium entitled “European Initiatives and the Career Resources They Offer to Emerging Scholars” at the “23rd IAGG World Congress of Gerontology and Geriatrics” in Amsterdam, The Netherlands (July 2026).
4. An invited symposium “COST Action LeverAge: A European network to leverage the multi-age workforce” chaired by Dr. Marija Davcheva, will be featured at the International Congress of Applied Psychology (ICAP) in Florence, Italy (July 2026).
5. COST Action LeverAge also has a significant presence, including Dissemination, ITC and YRI conference grant awardees at the upcoming annual conference of the Academy of Management (August 2026).

COST Action LeverAge was represented at two sister COST Action conferences:

1. Prof. Dr. Jurgen Deller delivered a keynote speech at the COST Action DIGI-net Final Conference that was held at Mendel University, in Brno, Czechia, from June 8-10 2026.
2. Dr. Justin Marcus presented on the activities of COST Action LeverAge as an invited speaker at the first Annual General Meeting of COST Action HUMAN-IT that was held at the University of Salento, in Lecce, Italy, from June 24-25 2026.

A new impact working group lead by Dr. Patrick Vestner from University of Cologne / MILAK at ETH Zurich has been formed to strengthen our dissemination and impact initiatives. Further members are Dr. Mariia Balytska from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and Dr. Luca Fazi from the University of Bologna. The group has developed new communication formats for practitioners. Check out our first knowledge bites covering research across all of our LeverAge working groups, and expect more to come over the next grant period. The impact work group also started producing short video’s of LeverAge researchers sharing their key research take-aways for practice. These will be released soon on our website and social media channels.

Call for Papers

The Dublin City University’s Age-Friendly University (AFU) Initiative invites you to be part of an important European conversation at its international Generations at Work Conference, taking place in Dublin on 22–23 October 2026. Conference submissions are due by August 21 2026: https://www.dcu.ie/agefriendly/AFU-Conference-2026

GP3 Grant Award Calls Are Still Open

A limited number of GP3 (2026) Grant awards, available first come first serve (pending fit with the Action scientific agenda), are still open including for Short Term Scientific Missions, ITC & YRI Conference Grants, and Dissemination Conference Grants. Grant decisions will be taken within a few days, and all grant activities must be completed by October 15, 2026.

New Collaborative COST Action LeverAge Publications

Fasbender, U., Drury, L., Goštautaitė, B., Keller, A. C., Vignoli, M., & Wolf, T. (2026). No matter the distance? A theoretical framework of age-diverse friendship effects. Work, Aging and Retirement, waag007. https://doi.org/10.1093/workar/waag007

Fousiani, K., Xu, S., & Stoyanova, S. (2026). How competitive climates trigger conflict with colleagues and supervisors and how team knowledge sharing helps. International Journal of Conflict Management, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCMA-09-2025-0341

Katsaouni, M., Gligor, L. E., Tripkovic, K., Sotiroska Ivanoska, K., Rusu, H., Pobric, A., Kiran, S., Truxillo, D. M., & Nena, E. (2025). Healthy Aging: A Key Strategy for Retaining Skilled Nursing Professionals. Work and Health, 1(3), 15. https://doi.org/10.53941/wah.2025.100015

Lang, G., & Eppler-Hattab, R. (2026). Cultural adaptation of the workplace age-friendliness measure to German with validation in Austrian organizations. The Gerontologist, 66(7), gnag082. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnag082

Vestner, P., Pfrombeck, J., Hampel, K., & Burmeister, A. (2026). A dyadic training to promote technology-related learning and development among age-diverse employees: The power of coworkers’ enthusiasm. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 99, e70137. https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.70137

Please see here for a comprehensive list of collaborative COST Action LeverAge publications.

Acknowledgement of Action Support

If a research project you are working on is eventually published and was presented at an ITC or Dissemination conference that you attended with Action funding OR was worked on during the course of a Short Term Scientific Mission that the Action funded OR was workshopped at an Action-funded workshop or Training School OR was presented, worked on, or otherwise discussed at length at an Action-funded Working Group meeting, please insert the following: “This publication is based upon work from COST Action CA22120, LeverAge, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).”

If you acknowledge Action funding, please do your best to make the publication (or a preprint of the publication) available via open access, and to the extent that your publishing contract allows. Action funds are available to support open access publication, subject to COST rules (see Annex 3 of the Annotated Rules) and awarded on a first come first serve basis.

COST Action LeverAge Social Media Presence