Meet the experts on the core team of the EQUALITY ResearchCollective.
Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or if you would like to work with us.
Sofie Vindevogel
Sofie Vindevogel has a doctorate in pedagogical sciences and works as a lecturer and researcher at HOGENT and the EQUALITY ResearchCollective. Her research is situated at the intersection between strength-based, community-based and transcultural orthopedagogy. It deals primarily with stressful living contexts and aims to understand how various forms of adversity and social injustice are dealt with individually and collectively, and what contributes to collective resilience and inclusion. Attention is paid to cultural diversity in particular, as well as the development of diversity-sensitive support. Several projects are situated in the context of political violence and migration, both in Belgium and internationally.
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Katrien De Maegd
Katrien De Maegd is chairperson of training of the educational programs for preschool and primary education. As a social worker and teacher, she teaches educational policy and mathematics in the primary education program. She is also involved as a researcher in the EQUALITY ResearchCollective. She is a promoter of several research projects located at the intersection of education and welfare. She relies on the right of every child to quality education and equal opportunities for all children and adolescents. Katrien also has expertise in regards to equal educational opportunities, transition moments, tutoring, parent involvement and cooperation between education and welfare. Katrien is often asked in the context of quality development within education (e.g. context description).
Joris Van Poucke
Joris Van Poucke is a researcher and lecturer in social philosophy and cultural sciences in the social work program. As a researcher, he has participated in projects on buddy performance, elderly with a migratory background, new rituals and inclusive learning environments. Within the EQUALITY ResearchCollective, he focuses on issues of diversity and cohabiting, most recently on the research project DIVER-CITY, a community-based participatory research concerning connecting partnerships as the basis for a diverse-sensitive treatment services for families with a migratory background.
Caroline Vandekinderen
Caroline Vandekinderen is a lecturer in the undergraduate social work program and is connected to EQUALITY ResearchCollective as a postdoctoral researcher. Her research interests include poverty and social inequality, human rights, citizenship, gender and diversity, disability & mental health. She brings these themes into focus from ethnographic and biographical research approaches. Throughout all of her research, the dynamic interaction between people in vulnerable situations and the wider social, political and cultural context is central. She is currently conducting research on the role of social restaurants (and by extension food initiatives) in poverty reduction. Drawing on rich empirical evidence, it explores the normative orientation (logics on the spectrum favor law) of social work practices and links the subjective attribution of meaning of people in vulnerable situations to (local social) policy and practice.
Chris Swerts
Chris Swerts is a lecturer at the undergraduate program in Orthopedagogy and a senior researcher at the EQUALITY ResearchCollective. Within the research center he focuses in particular on strengthening the quality of life of adolescents within the broad youth assistance, developing an action-oriented tool to work with quality of life (as an action framework) in practice and shaping people-oriented support. Furthermore, he is involved in co-creative learning processes concerning the implementation of quality of life within daily support practices. In his work, he argues for the importance of the position and voice of adolescents (in relation to the environment). In addition, his research activities focus on the broader issue of the quality of support and the impact of practice, policy and research on it.
Didier Reynaert
Didier Reynaert is a lecturer of social work at HOGENT and a senior researcher at the EQUALITY ResearchCollective. His research focuses on human rights, children’s rights and social justice as action frameworks for the social work. Research themes include, amongst others, (child) poverty, under-protection, social exclusion, socialization, accessibility, citizenship and community-based care. Didier Reynaert is also a guest lecturer of Social Work Theory at HAN University of Applied Sciences (the Netherlands), a guest lecturer of Ethics and Deontology at Ghent University and a guest lecturer of Children's Rights at Odisee.
Claudia Claes
Claudia Claes is a lecturer and head of department in the department of Social Work and a senior researcher at the EQUALITY ResearchCollective. Her research focuses on the development of theories of the Quality of Life ideology and its implementation in practice. From this perspective, she is a member of numerous advisory bodies within the workfield.
Jessica De Maeyer
Jessica De Maeyer is a lecturer in the undergraduate orthopedagogy program and coordinator of the EQUALITY ResearchCollective, HOGENT. Additionally, she is the coordinator of the academic workshop Socialization, within which practitioners, academics, policy officers, and field experts on this theme exchange expertise and develop projects together. Her main areas of research are: Quality of Life, user perspectives and experience-based knowledge, co-creation, citizenship, outreach and community-based support, harm reduction and the support of people in socially vulnerable situations in general.