This is the website for The making of ‘grey power’: How political understandings develop over the life course project led by Jonathan Moss and Nick Clarke. The project is funded by the Leverhulme Trust and will run from 2025 to 2027.

The project uses previously overlooked longitudinal qualitative data from the Mass Observation Archive (MOA) to answer a fundamental research question: how do political understandings develop over the life course? This question underpins both longstanding concerns in social and political science about the relationship between aging and political engagement, and more recent public debates about intergenerational divisions in British politics. We offer an alternative approach to existing studies by following a range of individuals from the early 1980s to the present day, observing in great detail their political development – the development of their political understandings, interests, preferences, habits, and identities – and the role of events, material circumstances, and cultural frames in this development.