dr. Florentine Sterk

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Communication

Assistant Professor, Network Institute

Personal information

I work as an assistant professor of Language and Communication within the department of Language, Literature & Communication at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Research

My research focuses on forms of expert to non-expert communication, such as science communication, science journalism, and health communication. These forms of communication require recontextualization and reformulation of expert discourse to make information accessible to a non-expert audience. My research interest lies with how these processes are reflected in discourse.

In my PhD thesis, titled Style and Substance: Training in popularization discourse for interdisciplinary higher education students, I focused on training in popularization writing skills for higher education students. In this interdisciplinary project I combined methodology from linguistics and educational sciences. I researched text strategies that occur in popularization discourse, baseline popularization writing skills and writing skills development in higher education students, and student perceptions of education in writing.

Teaching

I teach the following courses:

BA program Communication and Information Studies (CIS)