SOHuman about research

Ateneo de Manila has always been at the forefront of fostering connections across the university and the wider community. As learning and collaborative spaces have moved online, the Loyola Schools continues to create, renew, and maximize the use of digital platforms to spur and nurture connections among students, teachers, and academic researchers. 

At the School of Humanities- Research and Creative Works (SOH-RCW), a way to extend that sense of connectedness is through SOHuman. Taking inspiration from Brandon Stanton’s blog ‘Humans of New York,’ SOHUman allows SOH faculty to share their research stories with a broader audience.

“Instead of the familiar research fora, we decided to maximize the use of the social media platform such as the SOH’s official Facebook page Flourish. It’s our virtual set-up that allows faculty to share their stories about their research in a powerful way with a wider online community. In addition to this, SOH gets to introduce the winners of the annual Graduate Research Awards and Outstanding Scholarly Work,” says Dr. Claudette M. Ulit, SOH-RCW Coordinator.

Social media has been the common thread that brings together, especially at the onset of a pandemic. SOHuman, as Dr. Ulit adds, acts as an “inspiration and model for other scholars and researchers from other disciplines to also share their stories and processes of research with the general public. “

While it takes concerted effort to ask researchers to participate, she notes that they have been receiving positive feedback about the endeavor.

“The research stories we receive are truly interesting. Each story unfolds not just what a teacher’s research is about but also goes deep into the why’s and how’s of it. It makes the research more understandable and interesting to a non-expert, public audience. Unlike a research report, a research story focuses on the narrative of the learning process, the importance of the research to others, and even the personal interaction with the research itself. In other words, the research story lets the audience see things that are behind the making of the research, which is not in the research paper itself. “

SOHuman opens the conversation between the researcher and the audience, and that, in a way, helps the researchers to be understood by the public. Affording the audience a glimpse into what goes on in research also extends opportunities for collaboration, says Ulit: “This openness and transparency build trust and can lead to an accelerated and more effective research system. There is a good chance that SOH will continue this project even after everything is back to the traditional set-up.”