About Ties

Ties is the network of the LONELY-EU consortium: the place where the people working on social isolation and loneliness across Europe find each other, and find each other’s work.

The name is the field’s own word. A social tie is the unit everything here is built on: the thing an intervention tries to create, the thing isolation is the absence of, and the thing this platform exists to make more of between the people in it. Granovetter’s point about weak ties applies to researchers as much as to anyone: the connection that changes your work is rarely the colleague down the corridor.

What is here

A member directory and a map, so you can find who works on what, where, and with which populations. A space for each kind of work, and a thread for each country, written in that country’s language. An intervention registry that keeps a permanent record of each initiative and names the people behind it, so an entry is also a way to reach them. The consortium’s policy briefs, read straight from Zenodo, and the measurement tools the network maintains.

Around those: a calendar of conferences, webinars and meetings; a Noticeboard for funding calls, calls for papers, jobs and datasets; Writing, where members publish pieces under their own name; and a weekly digest of research, policy and practice, posted every Monday.

What is not here

No scores, no leaderboards, and no reward for how much you post. The recognition badges are for open practice, inclusive work and evidence, and for nothing else. The people this network is for have little time, so nothing here asks for attention for its own sake.

Who it is for

The LONELY-EU consortium first, and then the wider field: researchers, practitioners, policy people, campaigners, employers, and the companies building for social connection, inside the EU and beyond it. Only the country layer is scoped to the 27 member states and the associated countries, because that is what the grant covers; everything else is open to the wider field.

How to start

Fill in your profile, and in particular the populations you work with. It is the field that makes the directory and the map worth using, it is what earns the Inclusive Practice badge, and it takes a minute. Add your ORCID while you are there and your LONELY-EU publications will appear on your profile on their own. Then say hello in General: one line on what you are working on, and one on what you would like help with.