Interview with Iuliana CĂLIN, PhD student in Communication Sciences

My name is Iuliana Călin and I am a PhD student in Communication Sciences at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration in Bucharest, Romania. I am passionate about research in social sciences and humanities, seeking to expand my knowledge in this area by attending courses, conferences, and workshops.

My PhD thesis deals with communication in the digital environment in an interdisciplinary perspective and one dimension of this scientific approach is the psycho-social behavior in the virtual space. In this context, I was interested in completing my knowledge in the communication field with elements of behavioral psychology. The course in French organized by Sciences Po was dedicated to this topic, being the only one in this field offered by CIVICA partner universities via the ESR Course Catalogue.

This course was a very pleasant experience for me, exceeding my expectations, because I also learned new things about other aspects, including specific research methods for the behavioral sciences (several types of experiments were presented in the class) and interactive ways to teach a course (using wooclap.com for feedback from students and for solving weekly assignments). Moreover, we received the PDF presentations at the end of each session, which allowed us to go back over the taught concepts, and we were presented with a substantial bibliography of interesting books and studies related to this field, including titles from the French-speaking world. Lou Safra also discussed with each course participant about the specific concerns in their area of interest and expressed her availability to answer our questions even when the course ended.  

I would also recommend other early stage researchers to attend CIVICA courses in order to gain access to other perspectives on their field of interest, to interact with researchers from other geographical areas and to learn about their way of doing research. I am grateful to the CIVICA network for the opportunity to participate in interesting courses! Congratulations on building a network of future researchers at European level!