
Qualitative social scientist
Brussels Area, Belgium

Qualitative social scientist
Brussels Area, Belgium
Tom Van Hout (1978) studied linguistics and journalism at the University of Antwerp. From 2005 until 2009 he was a BOF doctoral research fellow at the Department of Language and Communication at Ghent University. His PhD is a linguistic ethnographic account of business reporters' writing practices, i.e. how business journalists write from news sources. Tom has taught Business English at the Universities of Antwerp and Ghent and has guest-lectured at the universities of Utrecht, Leuven (Lessius) and Milan.
His research interests include organizational discourse, journalism studies, ethnography and literacy. He is a published author and a founding member of two international research groups: NewsTalk&Text and Discourse in Organizations.
At Ghent University, he served as an elected representative on the Arts Faculty Council for the research assistant constituency and he was involved in a number of knowledge transfer initiatives. He also served as an editor for Tekstblad, a popular-scientific Dutch language communication journal.
In 2009, Tom was elected as Communications Secretary of the UK Linguistic Ethnography Forum.
qualitative and quantitative applied linguistic research, ethnography, business news, PR, news production, newswriting, discourse analysis, pragmatics, writing and editing, language teaching, language testing
(Educational Institution; Research industry)
September 2005 — August 2009 (4 years )
Research:
Conducted 6 months of fieldwork at a newsroom in Flanders; Co-founded NewsTalk&Text, a research group on news production; Presented at international conferences; Published research in national and international peer-reviewed journals
Teaching:
Guest-lectured at the University of Utrecht (The Netherlands), Lessius University College (Belgium) and the University of Milan (Italy);
Taught weekly Business English classes in 2nd year undergraduate degree program in the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration
Academic service:
Organized panels at international conferences; Organized a workshop series on discourse in organizations; Editor of Tekstblad, a popular communication journal (in Dutch); Participated in ETS benchmarking workshop in Berlin (October 2006); Guest-edited a special issue on discourse in organizations; Co-designed and taught a news management seminar at Stichting Lezen (Belgium)
(Educational Institution; 501-1000 employees; Research industry)
September 2001 — June 2005 (3 years 10 months)
Research:
Developed a reading proficiency test for the Flemish Ministry of Education; Conducted experimental research on clause combining strategies in English and Dutch; Co-founded Discourse in Organizations, an interuniversity research group on organizational discourse; Co-organized an international conference on discourse in organizations.
Teaching:
Taught undergraduate courses in English composition (Faculty of Arts) and Business English (Faculty of Applied Economics)
Academic service:
Updated the Pragmatics Bibliography at the IPrA Research Center
PhD , linguistics, ethnography, journalism , 2005 — 2009
My PhD research is an ethnographic account of business reporters' sourcing practices, i.e. how journalists use (corporate) sources to write business news.
Journalism Training Certificate , Journalism, newswriting , 2003 — 2003
Teacher Training , Education, LSP , 2000 — 2001
MA Germanic Languages , Linguistics , 1997 — 2001
1991 — 1996
research, science, linguistics, discourse analysis, ethnography, triathlon, basketball, wine, soul & jazz, the West Indies
NewsTalk&Text, Discourse in Organizations, TriKa, IPrA, BCAT, UCAS, IronTeam, BBC Hoboken