Dr Michael Fine is Honorary Professor in the Department of Sociology at Macquarie University, Sydney. He was Associate Professor and Head of Department 2008-2012. Before commencing at Macquarie in 2000 he was Senior Research Fellow at the Social Policy Research Centre(SPRC) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW).

Michael has researched, published and taught in the fields of social policy, ageing, care and human services for over thirty years. He has been a member of the NSW Ministerial Advisory Committee on Ageing, the NSW Carers Advisory Council, and an Executive Board Member for the Northside Community Forum - the largest regional community care organisation in NSW. He is an editor of the new International Journal of Care and Caring and a member of the editorial board of the Australasian Journal of Gerontology. He is currently leading an ARC Linkage research project with Prof. Kathy Eagar of Australian Health Services Research Institute of the University of Wollongong on the development of an Australian Community Care Outcomes Measure (ACCOM), in collaboration with a number of leading community care providers in NSW. The final report of the project is available here.

Michael was Vice-President of RC11, the Research Committee on Ageing of the International Sociological Association (ISA) 2001-2009, and a member of the executive. He is a Fellow of the Australian Association of Gerontology (AAG) and former member of the National Executive. A long-term member of the State executive, he was elected President of the AAG, NSW Division, 1991-1995 and was Chair of the Scientific Committee for the AAG Annual Conference in 2006 and 2013.

Michael's column reflecting on various issues in aged care is published bi-monthly in Aged Care Insite. His book, A Caring Society? Care and the Dilemmas of Human Service in the Twenty-First Century, was published internationally by Palgrave/MacMillan in 2007.

• The social division of care
• The factors that influence the provision, use and effectiveness of human services
• The outcomes of community aged care
• Ageing and intergenerational dependencies