University of Groningen
Healthy ageing in a comparative perspective
Reus Pons, Matias
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Publication date: 2018
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Reus Pons, M. (2018). Healthy ageing in a comparative perspective: A study of the health of older migrants and non-migrants across Europe. University of Groningen.
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187 Acknowledgements
AcknowlEdgEmEnTs
This thesis was written thanks to a collaboration project between the University
of Groningen and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. During the past four years, I
have had the opportunity to learn and acquire many and diverse skills. However, this goal was not achieved without difficulties. Therefore, I would like to thank many people who helped during the process one way or another.
First of all, I would like to thank my family, especially my mother, father, and brother, who gave me the most strength and support during my whole life. They were the first to always believe in me and my capacities. I would also like to thank especially both of my grandmothers, my aunt Joana, my uncle Jaume, and my cousin Francesca. I could never forget of my great-aunt Catalina who, in spite not being there for most of my life, had an important influence in my personality and will always hold a very special place in my heart.
I would also like to express my gratitude to all my supervisors and co-authors for their help and guidance during this process. During the last four years, I gained knowledge and acquired skills thanks to your critical remarks and suggestions, which led to the writing of this thesis. Thank you Eva for being the person who first welcomed me as a PhD and for guiding me through this process, especially during the first steps, where I felt especially lost and often wondered “what am I doing here?”. Thank you Fanny for your help and for taking the role of main supervisor during the last year of PhD; thank you also for your understanding and support when I have experienced personal difficulties. Thank you Helga for your guidance, especially during the last steps, and also for your flexibility to ar-range meetings in a diversity of places and ways which definitely helped overcome difficulties arising due to physical distance. Thank you Hadewijch for being the main supervisor during my seven-month stay in Brussels, a period during which I experienced the most personal and thus also academic difficulties. Thank you Clara for guiding me through the last paper, for your flexibility, openness, and support in our discussions during the meetings, and for being the person with whom this whole project began with, when you were supervising my master thesis. Thank you all for your patience in guiding me during the last four years. I would like to express my gratitude to my friends and colleagues in (the Uni-versity of) Groningen, with whom I had a great time and exchanged interesting academic and non-academic opinions. Great thanks to my paranymphs, Sergi and
188
Acknowledgements
Lili, to my office mates, Acul, Daniël, and Bo, but also to many other friends and colleagues: Roberta, Simone, Gintare, Anastasios, Konstantina, Rik, Elda, Ilya, Katrin, Katharina, Nikoletta, Sepideh, Zaina, Michael, Jakko, Femke, Arun, Joost, Julia, Anna, Anu, Roselinde, Antje, and many others. I would also like to thank Mark for his support and patience in solving my statistical doubts. Thank you also to all supporting members from the graduate school and secretary, especially to Feara, who helped with the Dutch translation of the summary of this thesis. I would also like to thank Wilma and Jet, who helped me with my physical and emotional wellbeing during the process. Finally, to Pili, Fred, Anne, and Rene, who have been like a family in Groningen.
I would also like to thank my colleagues in the Healthy Ageing, Population and Society research group: Nardi, Bart, Sanne, Linden, Maja, Tali, Jisca, and Marloes. Additional thanks to my colleagues and friends at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel for welcoming me during my stay Susanna, Paulien, Tom, Laura, Jeroen, Eszter, Christophe, and many others. I am especially grateful to Didier and Hannelore for their help with the Belgian census data.
Finally, I would like to thank all my friends back in Spain for the great time and support, especially to Marta, Toni, Miquel, Ana, Pere, Joana, Aina, Lluís, Rubén, Antonia, Gael, Silvia, Juan, Cristian, Bea, Santi, Virginia, Juan Luis, Patricia, Delia, Chris, and Mario, among others.
