Good afternoon! (or morning, or evening!). My name is Jack Hopkins. I’m a 20 year-old student finishing my journalism degree in Toronto at Ryerson University. I recently got back from an exchange at RMIT, one of the major universities all the way down in Melbourne.
While I was there, I did a few things. I completed an internship at the Centre for Urban Research (CUR), one of RMIT’s largest academic departments. The CUR is a hub for professors, academics, and policymakers to dive into the many issues that affect how cities function, and how to make them better places to live in. This involves learning about topics in almost any field you can think of, from energy security, to environmental science, to lifestyle behaviours and cultural accommodation.
I chugged away in their media and communications department, putting my journalistic skills to the test.
I started small, editing the work of academics in the Urban Observer, which is their bi-monthly magazine. Some of it was in the UO May 2017 Issue, like: 
And this one as well:
But then, I broke out of that box by writing a front-page welcome to Billie Giles-Corti, a prestigious researcher who recently joined the CUR. To my relief, she complimented my writing once it came out.
I continued my writing streak with a piece on what needs fixing when researchers measure the financial health of Australians (“Financial Well-being”, research from Ashton De Silva).
Wonder how much free car parking chokes up cities? Check out my write-up published in the UO’s August 2017 edition (it’s on page 16, research from Dr. Liz Taylor).
And that’s not all! My CUR colleagues must have been enamoured by the sound of my voice as I was assigned voiceover work, introducing speaker guest panels (March 27 Talking Transport).
My voice continued taking over — I then made a few of my own podcasts. It was a learning curve figuring out what hardware, software, and questions to use for coaxing out decent answers from the researchers I grilled, but I’m proud of the final result.
The first one was on the importance of having enough greenspaces in cities (“Seeing the good from trees” with Dr. Marco Amati). In another one, I questioned whether new technologies being brought into homes to measure energy use are all that impressive (“Smart home control – is the reality as bright as its promise?” with Dr. Yolande Strengers).
This list would certainly have gotten longer, but my exchange & internship ended and I had to fly back home, so that’s it! Thank you for reading 😀
Jack Hopkins 