Lara Pivodic

Lara Pivodic is Professor of Ageing and the End of Life at the End-of-Life Care Research Group of Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) & Ghent University, and co-chair of the group’s Ageing & Palliative Care research programme. 

Situated at the intersection of medical and social sciences, Lara’s work covers a wide range of topics related to ageing, the end of life, and death, including epidemiological studies, policy analyses, intervention development and clinical trials. Most of her research uses mixed-methods, combining quantitative and qualitative methods to study older people's health- and well-being trajectories towards the end of life and develop interventions to support them and their families as they navigate serious illness and dying. She is the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council (ERC)-funded project TRAJECT (2023-2028), which seeks to re-shape our current understanding of older people's end-of-life trajectories, combining structured measures and individual narratives.

Lara Pivodic is the author and co-author of numerous publications in medical and social science journals, and she has received the Early Researcher Award of the European Association for Palliative Care for her contributions to cross-national research in palliative care. Her previous research grants include a PhD scholarship as a European Commission-funded Marie Curie PhD Training Fellow, two 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 Jonge Academie (Young Academy of Sciences) of Belgium.