Sarah Dury

Sarah Dury is a Researcher at the Department of Educational Sciences at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Her work focuses on aging, social participation, healthcare policy, and volunteerism, with a particular emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches to compassionate communities and serious illness management. She leads or collaborates on multiple projects addressing topics such as death literacy, intercultural learning through voluntourism, and the coordination of volunteers and paid staff in non-profit organizations. Dury has authored over 295 publications, including peer-reviewed articles, books, and datasets, and has received accolades like the Emerging Scholar Award (2011, 2012) and a Fellowship from the Summer Fellowship Program (2011).

Her research spans from analyzing loneliness in older adults to evaluating compassionate university initiatives and the impact of caregiving on mental health. She has contributed to high-impact projects such as COCO_ENV, exploring environmental influences on illness experiences, and EU-CoWork, which addresses workplace mental health in the digital era. Dury’s work often intersects with policy, advocating for evidence-based approaches to aging populations, urban disadvantage, and pandemic solidarity.

Grants and collaborations include the FWOAL1113 and FWOAL1097 projects, focusing on causal mechanisms of death literacy and volunteer-staff networks. She has supervised or examined PhD theses in areas like sport-based community projects and nonprofit management. Dury is actively involved in public engagement, appearing in media like Bruzz to discuss loneliness and palliative care advocacy. Her datasets, such as the Solidarity COVID19 survey and Compassionate University interviews, reflect her commitment to actionable research.