Achieving Social Impact

Marta Soler is Professor of Sociology at the University of Barcelona and director of CREA (Community of Research on Excellence for All). She served at the ORCID board of directors and is the Editor of the journal 'International Sociology'. She is currently the Main Researcher of the H2020 Project 'SOLIDUS' on the analysis of solidarity acts during the crisis in Europe. Further, she is the Knowledge Manager Coordinator of the FP7 Project 'IMPACT-EV' on the evaluation of scientific, political and social impact of research. The work developed at IMPACT-EV has led to the development of SIOR (Social Impact Open Repository), the first open digital repository to display, store and cite the social impact of research results. She is Chair of the Research Network 'Social Theory' at the European Sociological Association. She joined CREA as a junior researcher in 1992 and since then she has participated in national and European studies on strategies to overcome exclusion. In 2001, she graduated from Harvard, with a dissertation on literary gatherings and empowerment of the working class. Some years later she spoke about this study at the Havens Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in a lecture titled 'Beyond Bourdieu'. Back in Spain she continued this work discussing speech acts theory through the analysis of communicative acts, and applying this analysis to gender inequalities and gender violence in different domains.