In 2020, I was selected as one of 16 candidates (out of 81) and became one of 8 finalists in the Flemish PhD Cup, a competition where recent PhDs present their research clearly to a non-specialist audience. I was the only literary scholar and historian among the finalists.

After media training, participants deliver a three-minute live pitch. The semi-finals were at VRT’s Marconi studio, and the finals at The Depot, Leuven.

Live pitch: https://youtu.be/2m7HM1SjypM?si=09BCA_CX5-E2TgWR
Short pitch: https://youtu.be/gI7a0yn1mw8?si=F-mikDp5no8qjgVo

The PhD Cup also led to several science communication outputs. I wrote two EOS articles: a print piece with Walter Daelemans on computational personality profiling, and a web article on the authorship of Heloise and Abelard’s twelfth-century letters.

• De Gussem, J., & Daelemans, W. ‘Ben je wat je schrijft?’ EOS Psyche & Brein Special – Identiteit (2020): 40–43.

• De Gussem, J. ‘Hoe taalalgoritmes een middeleeuwse liefdesaffaire bekoelden’. EOS Wetenschap – Geschiedenis (16 Sept. 2020). https://www.eoswetenschap.eu/geschiedenis/hoe-taalalgoritmes-een-middeleeuwse-liefdesaffaire-bekoelden

This work was later adapted by De Standaard:
Houthuys, A. ‘“Mijn hart behoort jou toe”, schreef Abélard naar zichzelf’. De Standaard (2 Oct. 2020). https://www.standaard.be/nieuws/mijn-hart-behoort-jou-toe-schreef-abelard-naar-zichzelf/47755459.html

Other media engagements included an AVS TV interview (5 Oct. 2020), a De Gentenaar article, and a web piece on VRT Taal.

The PhD Cup strengthened my ability to translate specialized research into accessible narratives across print, online, and broadcast media.

My introduction and revised translation of the letters of the twelfth-century visionary Hildegard of Bingen appeared in the series Middeleeuwse Monastieke Teksten, which is dedicated to producing scholarly yet accessible Dutch translations of medieval monastic texts. Its reach is further supported thanks to a partnership with Uitgeverij Damon. By presenting these works in clear and engaging Dutch, the series not only serves scholars but also actively bridges the gap between academic research and the wider public, reaching readers interested in the history and literature of monasticism.

I made a significant contribution to the computational authorship attribution section in the teachers’ manual 'Chatbot: AI on school’, published first in 2021, and authored by Natacha Gesquière (my name is in the acknowledgements) and co-authored by Veronique Hoste, Cynthia Van Hee, and Francis Wyffels. The manual was created as part of the ‘AI Op School’-initiative, which aims to introduce artificial intelligence concepts into secondary education. It was designed predominantly to help teachers of the second and third grades of secondary education guide students in exploring Natural Language Processing (NLP) and basic programming in Python.

I prepared course materials targeted at secondary school pupils on the Anglo-Latin and Continental texts around King Arthur, with eye on the Flemish government’s new educational attainment targets pleading for more postclassical Latin in secondary school. The context was Ghent University’s Latin Didactics Day (21 May 2021), a professional development event for secondary-school Latin teachers, organised by Didactica Classica Gandensia (DCG). Under the theme ‘Latijn anders? Ander Latijn!’ (‘Latin differently? Different Latin!’), the day explored innovative ways of teaching Latin by moving beyond a strictly language-centred approach. The course materials were prepared in collaboration with Ciska Imschoot, teacher in the Guldensporencollege in Courtrai.

In 2021, I was guest expert for the STEaM project ‘Auteur of AI-teur’ at Sint-Lievenscollege (Ghent), an interdisciplinary initiative introducing secondary-school students to AI and language technologies. Participated in a recorded expert interview on algorithms, language models, and their relevance for the humanities and concepts of authorship. The interview was used as didactic material to support classroom discussion on AI, texts, and creativity. https://youtu.be/1ihySn1CQqI

On Saturday 6 December 2025, I was guest lecturer at TAJO vzw. TAJO is a weekend school offering extra learning opportunities to socially vulnerable youth (ages 10–14) to boost motivation, self-awareness, and societal orientation. I led an atelier and a workshop guiding small teams through an interactive research game to introduce scientific thinking and interdisciplinary problem-solving.

I was involved in three editions of the activities of Verleden Week (‘Past Week’), a week-long, theme-based project week in the Ghent University History programme that replaces regular classes with collaborative historical research. Students and staff work in interdisciplinary ateliers, experimenting with new methods, sources, and ways of telling history. The week ends with a public Historical Festival where the results are (alongside their peers and the teaching staff) presented to the wider public, invited experts, and alumni. In 2022, I was member of the communication atelier. I made a podcast. In 2023 I was member of the atelier ‘herbestemming’ (‘repurposing’) in the abbey of Herkenrode. In Herkenrode, we stayed overnight at the abbey and worked on site on its history, present-day use, and processes of reuse. The abbey served as the central case study for the atelier, combining shared sessions, engagement with the heritage site, and preparation of the final project. For the final project, I was mostly engaged in filming a documentary on the site with the students. In 2024, I delivered a lecture on ‘The Rural Idyll: Raymond Williams and The Country and the City’, exploring the ideological and narrative construction of the rural idyll and its critical potential to BA and MA students through lectures and source-based analysis.