Academics 2.0: Boosting Research and Outreach in the Digital Age

Venue: Room 5, Department of Sociology and Social Research - via Verdi 26, Trento
2 pm

Speaker:

• Marcel Bogers - University of Southern Denmark

Abstract:
The advent of social media has changed how we interact with the world in many ways, from sharing personal information with close friends, to how firms engage with their consumers or how large communities of peers coordinate their effort towards a common goal, to building a virtual world in a massively multiplayer game or organizing for street mass protests. But what does this digital transformation imply for academics? While some academics are relatively educated as users and early adopters of various technologies, this may not be the case for everyone.

Besides, new social technologies are in many respects still an underexploited resource for academics' daily activities. In this seminar, we present various ways in which social media can empower how academics do their job. We discuss pros and cons of different approaches and review the most promising tools and practices which foster new productive ways for academics to interact with colleagues, network, increase the outreach of their research, build visibility in their field, increase the effectiveness of their job-search processes, and so on.

The seminar is particularly targeted to academics in training (doctoral students) and novice faculties and aims at offering innovative way to increase their scientific productivity, socialization and visibility in their scientific community in the digital age. We also invite and strongly encourage both novice and experienced users to share their personal experiences of using social media and related digital technologies in their academic jobs.