An-Sofie Smetcoren Email & Phone Number

I'm an assistant professor and postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Educational Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. I obtained my Master's degree in Adult Educational Sciences in 2010 and my educational Master's degree in Teacher Training in 2011. I finished my PhD research on Older People & Housing in 2016 within the Belgian Ageing Studies research group under the supervision of prof. dr. Dominique Verté and prof. dr. Tinie Kardol. This doctoral study was made possible in part thanks to the Active Ageing Foundation - Stichting Bevordering Active Ageing. My main research interests focus on how urban environments affect the daily lives of their older residents (e.g. with a focus on housing, but also access to services and care) and how processes of social inclusion and exclusion take place in communities. In addition, I have a particular interest in the experiences of and giving voice to older people in vulnerable situations through the use of co-creative and participatory research approaches. As senior researcher within the Society & Ageing Research Lab, I'm leading the research line "Housing and living environment". At present I'm a VUB promotor for the Strategic Basic Research (FWO-SBO) project HOUSE 'Innovating housing for older adults and subjective wellbeing' and also scientific coordinating this project. In the past, I have worked on several national and European projects on housing and caring neighbourhoods such as Care & Living in Community (CALICO), RenoLab-C, Entour-Age Noord, ROSEnet, etc. In addition, since 2015, I have been a lecturer for the bachelor-after-bachelor programme in Psychosocial Gerontology at Odisee University College. Besides, I'm also member of the board of directors of 2 non-profit organisations: Aksent vzw (a local service centre in Brussels - since 2012) and Samenhuizen vzw (since 2021). And I participate/did participate in various advisory groups of research projects.An overview of my work be found here: https://researchportal.vub.be/en/persons/an-sofie-smetcoren

Listed skills include Science, Research, Scientific Writing, Qualitative Research, and 6 others.