Former BSc (Hons) in Psychology student, Anushiya Chathuri Vanajan successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis which was entitled "Older workers’ work limitations, vitality, and retirement preferences: the differential effects of chronic health conditions" on 14 December 2022. She was supervised by Professors Kène Henkens and Ute Bultmann from the Faculty of Medical Sciences / University Medical Centre Groningen (UMCG) at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. She is currently working at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographics Institute (NIDI) in the Generations and Gender Programme Team, in the areas of epidemiology of work and health.

After Anushiya completed her studies at Sunway University in 2014, she went back to her hometown, Colombo in Sri Lanka, and got a job as an Assistant Lecturer at the Colombo Institute of Research and Psychology (CIRP). Her stint in academia prepared her for postgraduate studies at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich where she graduated with a Master of Epidemiology in 2017. Her thesis was entitled, "Can Participant’s Characteristics Predict Benefit from a Multimodal Prevention Program for Individuals at Risk of Burnout? Secondary Analysis of a Randomized Control Trial’.

Almost immediately after completing her master's, Anushiya became a doctoral student at the University of Groningen. Anushiya’s research focuses on the impact of organizational policies on the healthy ageing of older workers. Her work centre is mostly around older workers with chronic health conditions: the specific work-related challenges they may face, how organizations can accommodate these challenges, and these workers’ transitions from work to retirement. She is also passionate about translating the knowledge she gains from her research into relevant policy and practice measures to make a difference in promoting healthy and sustainable working lives for older and younger workers alike.

Anushiya explained, “My doctoral study found that chronic health conditions differ widely in how they affect older workers’ health, work, and retirement preferences. These effects differ by the type of chronic health condition and whether the chronic health condition was newly diagnosed. The results also show that retirement improves the vitality of older workers, more so for manual workers than non-manual workers. So, taken together, experiencing chronic health conditions in the years before retirement is detrimental to older workers' health, work, and functioning. Because future cohorts of older workers will work longer, it is important to develop effective strategies to protect and promote the health and work ability of older workers with chronic health conditions.”

SMLS is very proud of Anushiya and wishes her all the best in her career. It is always very heart-warming to see graduates from the school succeeding in life.

This article was first posted in NIDI, 14 December 2022.