Ilse van Liempt appointed professor of Geographies of Migration and Urban Inequalities

On 1 February 2026, Ilse van Liempt will be appointed Professor of Geographies of Migration and Urban Inequalities at the Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning. Her chair focuses on the question of how migrants feel at home in the cities they arrive in, and how much space is literally and figuratively offered to newcomers in the city.

Ilse van Liempt conducts research into global migration processes and arrival processes. Her research focuses on issues surrounding inequality in mobility and reception. With her research, Van Liempt bridges the gap between migration and urban studies. With this chair, Utrecht University is giving new impetus to the field of migration and urban inequality, in which it has a long tradition with the late Professor Ronald van Kempen as a leading researcher.

I am very pleased with the appointment of Ilse van Liempt. I know her as an all-round academic, an enthusiastic lecturer, active in teaching and educational development, and an excellent researcher with a large international network in the field of migration and urban geography. Ilse is active in the public debate surrounding these social issues and is regularly featured in various media. I wish Ilse every success in her new position.

Relational approach

The relational approach that Van Liempt uses in her research enables her to investigate connections between people and places in a unique way, and also gives space to memories and emotions associated with feelings of home. Feeling at home as a migrant may not seem like an important area of research, but according to Van Liempt, it is at the heart of the contemporary integration issue. 

“Feeling at home starts from the everyday experiences of migrants themselves, and not from the formal aspects of integration, which are often limited to the areas of living, working and knowledge,” says Van Liempt. “In addition to formal aspects, it also reveals informal actors and places that matter from the migrant's perspective. By discussing feelings of belonging or not belonging, you also gain insight into how politics and regulations affect people's everyday lives. Integration as a concept emphasises the responsibility that migrants themselves have, but does not provide sufficient insight into how migrants are responded to by the receiving society. It is precisely this relational perspective that deserves more attention if we want to understand whether and how newcomers feel at home or not, and why.” 

The debate on migration

With her research, Van Liempt wants to contribute to the social debate on migration, but also to broaden that debate. There are many untruths and myths surrounding the subject of migration, and she sees it as her task to share knowledge and insights, and to generate policy-relevant knowledge. This chair will explicitly link research in the field of migration to broader issues surrounding inequalities in cities from an intersectional approach. 

“An intersectional perspective is now more necessary than ever, because there is a tendency to 'migratise' problems that have little to do with migration. The public debate on migration seems blinded by migration and pays too little attention to structural issues in cities such as access to an affordable housing market, protection of workers in the flexibilised economy and discrimination.”

The chair will examine both the experiences of migrants and the structures that influence those experiences. Urban inequality will be studied from the perspective of migrants, but will not be limited to migration.

Strategic theme

Van Liempt is one of the leaders of the Focus Area Migration and Societal Change, to which this chair is linked. There are also collaborations with the strategic theme Institutions for Open Societies, which means that this chair will strengthen the university's profile within the theme of migration.