The client
The European Academy on Religion and Society (EARS) is a collaboration of faculties and departments of Theology and Religious Studies from across Europe. The non-profit organization aims to make academic knowledge visible to society at large. This is done with an international team of analysts, who update the EARS dashboard, write articles for the website, provide input to events, and build the network.
Key questions to ftrprf
How can we bridge the gap between academia and society? How can we increase our network and influence? How can we define work processes and a project management structure that will increase EARS’ impact in the long term?
The action
We continuously gather knowledge in a database, analyze these insights and convey them publicly via a custom-built interactive dashboard and via insightful articles; organize successful events; and coordinate and design follow-up publications.
The impact
As a result, we streamlined EARS’ work processes and launched the EARS dashboard and a new website. In addition, we support EARS in producing consistent outputs and publications on the dashboard, website and social media; raising greater international awareness of EARS; and developing a network of hundreds of scholars, journalists, politicians, and others.
The collaboration
The collaboration with EARS started in early 2018. EARS wanted to expand their global reach, set up a team to create consistent content, and build an impactful network. The overarching goal: bridging the gap between academia and society by showing the impact of religion on the Europe of today. To achieve this, we set up an international team of analysts and built key work processes and tools for the organization. This included the technical development of the EARS dashboard, and the coordination of the analyst team to ensure continuous updates of the summaries of relevant articles on religion and society to this dashboard.
As a next step, insights from the dashboard were turned into short and accessible articles, published on the EARS website and social media. Further, we set up an event process for organizing round tables, where key topics are discussed with academics, politicians, journalists, and others. Finally, we are continuously building on the EARS network, where we aim to involve a broad variety of individuals interested in religion and society.
Outcomes
As a result of the collaboration, we have enabled EARS to launch its dashboard and new website. The website publishes 3 to 5 new articles a week to share insights on the role of religion in society in a way that is accessible to a wide audience. The dashboard is a digital tool that offers data visualization features and insights into the role of religion in news across Europe. The tool uses the summaries produced by analysts to categorize and analyze the input, producing graphs, maps, and other insights on the topic. With the help of our experienced analyst team, we ensure consistent outputs and publications on the dashboard, website and social media and pave the way for higher international awareness of EARS. And that’s not even all! Throughout the collaboration, EARS and ftrprf organized 15 successful events and oversaw the coordination and the design of follow-up publications.
250+
people joined the network within a year
13,800+
article summaries added to the dashboard
400+
articles written for the website
Matthias Smalbrugge, President, EARS
“Together with ftrprf, we have been able to significantly expand ears’ international reach and impact.”