Maynooth University Faculty of Social Sciences

David Prendergast is Professor and Head of the Department of Anthropology at Maynooth University. His research over the last twenty years has focused on later life-course transitions and he has authored a wide range of books and articles on ageing, health, technology, and social relationships. David’s doctorate, completed in 2002 at Cambridge University, was an ethnography of intergenerational relationships and family change in South Korea published as a monograph ‘From Elder to Ancestor, Old Age, Death and Inheritance in Modern Korea’ by Global Oriental. David subsequently worked on several major research projects at the Universities of Cambridge, Sheffield and Trinity College Dublin including a history of the British Colonial Wildlife Conservation, the provision of paid home care services in Ireland; and a three-year ESRC study into death, dying and bereavement in England and Scotland.  

David began working with Intel in 2006 attracted by the opportunity to utilize social research to design, develop, and evaluate culturally appropriate technologies to help enable older people to live independently. As Lead Social Scientist for Intel’s Digital Health Group in EMEA and Principal Investigator in the Technology Research for Independent Living Centre in Ireland, David led a diverse range of multidisciplinary research initiatives from the Global Ageing Project which explores the expectations and experiences of health and ageing around the world, to Irish and EU studies on pathways into health and social care, active retirement communities, loneliness, sleep and activity patterns, behavioural change, caregiver support systems, and social innovation. 

David moved to Intel Labs Europe in 2011 as User Experience Lead and helped set up and run the Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities with Imperial College and University College London until 2015. He also held the positions of Visiting Professor of Healthcare Innovation at Trinity College Dublin and external examiner to the Design Ethnography MSc at Dundee University. In recent years David has focused on directing Urban Living Labs and ‘Internet of Things’ research testbeds in London, San Jose and Dublin. These include environmental and air pollution monitoring in Hyde Park and Enfield, a Flood Management System with Dublin City Council, a Smart Stadium project with Croke Park, and a co-funded collaboration with the Science Foundation Ireland LERO Centre and Maynooth University on designing autonomous vehicles for Older Adults. 

His most recent volume ‘Ageing and the Digital Life Course’ edited with Chiara Garattini was given a CHOICE ‘Outstanding Academic Title’ by the American Library Association and was described as one of ‘the two most fascinating books on aging in the 21st Century’ by the Huffington Post. After the loss of his daughter Beth to AML Leukaemia in 2008, David has been a keen advocate and fundraiser for LauraLynn Children’s Hospice. In 2014, he was named a ‘hero of the Fortune 500’ by Fortune Magazine and has been nominated and shortlisted for the Volunteer Ireland Awards. He has received the Intel Involved Global Hero Award, Intel’s highest honour, as well as an Intel Labs Gordon E. Moore Award for humanitarian contributions. Prior to joining Maynooth University, he completed his eleven-year career at Intel as an invited torchbearer at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.

His recent documentary 'Circuits of Care: Ageing and Japan's Robot Revolution' was released in 2021.