Lauren Taylor

Lauren Taylor, M.A., M.S., L.C.S.W. psychiatric social worker and oral historian, is a Senior Lecturer at the Columbia University School of Social Work, and a graduate of the first cohort of Columbia’s Oral History Master of Arts program. Ms. Taylor has been on staff for many years at the Service Program for Older People (SPOP), a mental health clinic for older adults. 

Ms. Taylor gives seminars and workshops on a wide variety of mental health issues related to the aging process, with a focus on the therapeutic use of narrative. In 2002, in conjunction with CSSW and the Hartford Foundation, she made an educational film about sexuality and aging and, in 2005, a second teaching film in which she brought together social work students at CSSW with older women, for a dialogue about the challenges facing women across the life span. 

As an oral historian, Ms. Taylor has conducted dozens of life history interviews with older adults, both in the United States and abroad, and is studying the subjective experience of aging through the medium of narrative in a cross-cultural context.  
Ms. Taylor has lectured and published on the therapeutic use of oral history and life review for an aging population. Most recently, she collaborated with a social work researcher in Hong Kong, and CSSW professor Ada Mui, on a book for Columbia University Press about the therapeutic use of narrative with older adults in the East and the West.