Barbara Oomen holds a chair in the Sociology of Human Rights at Utrecht University. This is a small appointment (0.05) next to her fulltime position as president of the HZ/University of Applied Sciences.

Until June 2022 prof. Oomen worked at the University College Roosevelt.  From 2012-2016 she was the Dean of this College. Her research is about the interplay between law and society, with special attention for human rights, human rights cities and legal pluralism. She chaired the Vici-project 'Cities of Refuge', that considered the role of human rights in how cities throughout Europe welcome and integrate refugees. Het most recent books  are  'Rights for Others: the slow-homecoming of human rights in the Netherlands' (2014) and 'Global Urban Justice: the rise of human rights cities' (2016), both with Cambridge University Press.

Barbara Oomen was also active in the field of education, as an expert on human rights education, undergraduate research and excellence in education. She holds a variety of social positions in the field of human rights and education. In the past, she was a member of the Advisory Board of the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights, the Constitutional Review Commission, the Advisory Council on International Affairs and the UNESCO scientific commission. In the 2016-2017 academic year, prof. Oomen was a Senior Fernand Braudel fellow at the European University Institute in Florence.