Michelle Putnam, PhD, MGS, FGSA, is the director of the Gerontology Institute and a professor in the Gerontology Department at the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMB). Before joining the Gerontology Department at UMB, Putnam held the Jennifer Eckert Endowed Chair at Simmons University School of Social Work.
Putnam holds a BA in history from the University of Michigan, an MA in gerontological studies from Miami University in Ohio, and a PhD in social welfare from the University of California, Los Angeles. She also served as a postdoctoral fellow in public health and disabilities at Oregon Health & Sciences University. Putnam’s scholarship focuses on the intersections of aging and disability, including how growing older with lifelong and long-term disability differs from aging into disability for the first time in later life, and on building bridges among aging and disability research, policy, and practice. She currently serves as editor-in-chief of Innovation in Aging, a journal of the Gerontological Society of America.