www.socio-hub.com is an online platform where the work of students and staff of the Sociology Department is shared with the world. Its core aims are to recognize the value of the academic output of both students and staff and to blow up the “academia bubble” by facilitating the exchange of information and knowledge between the university and the general public, companies, or governmental institutions.
Why did we create such a platform?
If we only look at the students, every year they produce an incredible amount of valuable academic work in terms of literature reviews, policy interventions, thesis, etc., that could be very helpful to society.
But there is a big problem: the inaccessibility of academic work. On the one hand, students and researchers are trained to write in a specific style that is rather formal. Other scholars that are themselves used to such academic writing style can easily read and understand the concepts and the methods described in academic papers. This is not the case when the reader is not used to the jargon of academic writing. On the other hand, most papers that are published by scholars are under a pay wall and the papers or theses written by students, well, those are not published anywhere.
The project was inspired by the following question:
Do you remember when you were a student, and put so much effort and time into writing a paper, then you received a grade from your teacher, and never saw that paper again?
We believe that to be such a waste because some of the work the students are doing is of outstanding academic quality!
Coming from there, the project was initiated by Ioana Pop, Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology TiU, and funded by EDUiLAB ‘Innovate Your Education’ program. It was further developed with the help of a group of students who volunteered to contribute to the project with their unique skills and knowledge. Together they formed the Socio-Hub team!
Meet the team:
Firstly, the creator of the project: Ioana Pop, assistant professor in sociology. She is the reference point for all team members: she gives guidelines for what needs to be done, keeps track of the overall progress, and never runs out of feedback.
While Ioana plays a fundamental role in the development of the project, the Socio-Hub wouldn’t have come to existence without its team members.
Sole Colombo. During her 3rd year Sociology BA, Sole has done her internship with Ioana. She was the communication channel between Ioana and the whole team – she was the one who spammed everyone with emails. Sole also worked on the development of skills training materials for “blog posts” and “fact sheets”.
Simone Willekens. During her 2nd year as a Sociology BA student and board member of Versot, Simone was the latest addition to the team. She brought valuable, practical experience in communication and graphic design – which was immediately put to use in the “infographics” and “fact sheets” teams.
Yoanna Vodenova. During her 3rd year as a Sociology BA student, Yoanna combined a research internship with Ioana with adding some extra girl power to the project when needed. She mainly collaborated with the “fact sheets” team.
Emmie Verspeek was a MA student of “Health Humanities” and “Health, Wellbeing and Society”. She was the busy bee of the Socio-Hub team. She worked for Diggit magazine where she developed her non-academic-writing skills – which she shared with the “blog posts” team.
Ross Howard, who was a MA student of “Health, Wellbeing and Society”, has lived pretty much anywhere, studied a wide variety of topics, and worked in very different fields. In his past careers, Ross developed his talent in writing – which made him a perfect member for the “blog posts” team.
Marlen Paulitti was a student in the Sociology Extended Master program. She was a quiet, creative soul. She had great drawing skills, both “pencil and paper” and graphical. Marlen was one of the two creators of the Socio-Hub logo and was also part of the “infographics” team.
Catalin Popa. During his 1st year as a Sociology BA student, Catalin was the Socio-Hub IT technician, a very important role in these times of Zoom meetings. He was very enthusiastic and with great skills in graphic design. Catalin was the other creator of our logo and member of the “infographics” team.
Alex Thomin. During his 3rd year as a Psychology BA student and while being a board member of Cicero, Alex developed skills training material for “animated knowledge clips”, an important tool for the creation of all other training packages.
Milou Sluys. While being a MA student of “Health, Wellbeing and Society”, Milou unfortunately had to leave the Socio-Hub team, being too busy with her studies. Milou had a great contribution in the “animated knowledge clips” team.
Last but not least, our website designer Martijn Swolfs, a young freelancer from Tilburg. He combined professionality with a ‘guy next door’ attitude, which made him a great collaborator – also because he somehow managed to always be calm, in spite of the tight and heavy schedule.