The increased life expectancy of people in industrialised nations is linked to a rise in age-related illnesses, most notably neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases as well as Frontotemporal Dementia and Prion diseases. This has both economic and social consequences for society and represents a heavy burden on public healthcare systems. The aim of the "Dementia in an Ageing Society" research focus is to correlate the findings of basic and clinical research on neurodegenerative diseases with social sciences and humanities studies focused on an increasingly ageing society. Interdisciplinary discussions at the interface between these fields should replace the usually separate expert debates, thus fostering and reinforcing not only exchanges between the natural and the social sciences or humanities but also the debate between basic research and applied medicine in this domain.