Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences
Dr. Jaafar Alloul is Assistant Professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology. His research deals with transnational class-making in global migration, social (im)mobility in relation to racialization in Europe, and state and nation-building in the Middle East. He has carried out extensive fieldwork in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar. Jaafar is currently working on a research project about human capital development in Saudi Arabia, exploring societal transformation through the lens of medical science migration to Europe and North America. He also has applied research experience with the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
Elma Blom studied Dutch language and linguistics at Utrecht University with a double specialization in Theoretical Linguistics and Sociolinguistics. She is part of the Department of Development and Education of youth in Diverse Societies (DEEDS) at Utrecht University in 2012. Since 2018, she holds a chair in Language Development and Multilingualism in Family and Education. She is also affiliated with the UiT AcqVA Aurora Center for Language Acquisition, Variation & Attrition in Tromsø. Internationally, she moreover collaborates with researchers involved in the European COST action Language Impairment in a Multilingual Society: Linguistic Patterns and the Road to Assessment
Özge Bilgili is Assistant Professor of interdisciplinary social science at Utrecht University at the European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER). Her expertise is on migrant integration, transnationalism and policy analysis in related areas. She is the chair of Dutch Association for Migration Research (DAMR), a board member of IMISCOE Standing Committee on Migrant Transnationalism and an affiliated researcher of United Nations University MERIT.
Mariëtte de Haan is Professor in Social and Behavioural Sciences. Her research focuses on Intercultural Education. Her research projects include the transformation of socialization during migration and the prevention of polarization in education. She runs the UNION project that foucses on inclusion in education.
David Henig is Associate Professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology, Utrecht University. Henig’s work explores how people remake their lifeworlds in the wake of dramatic societal ruptures. Henig has carried out extensive fieldwork in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina, focused, among other topics, on displacement, borders, transregional mobility.
Paul Herfs has been closely involved in the integration of foreign doctors in the Netherlands. Often their medical diplomas are not recognised by the Health Secretary. With his help, hundreds of foreign doctors succesfully enrolled in Dutch medical schools. He is senior researcher at the European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER). He studies the requalification trajectories of foreing medical doctors in the Netherlands. He also studies their possibilities to enter the Dutch labour market as doctors.
Marcel Lubbers is Professor of Interdisciplinary Social Science: Relations between groups and cultures and he leads the European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER). He is known for his work on right-wing radicalism, nationalism and immigrant integration.
Borja Martinovic is Associate Professor at the Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science and a member of the European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER). Her research deals with attitudes toward immigrants among members of ethnic majorities, but she also studies ethnic relations and immigrant integration from the perspective of immigrants. Borja is currently working on her ERC Starting Grant project on collective psychological ownership (CPO) and intergroup relations called OWNERS.
Verena Seibel is Assistant Professor at the Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science at Utrecht University and affiliated with the European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER). In her current work, Verena focuses on how migrants perceive their host society and the welfare state. She is particularly interested in migrants’ system knowledge about welfare benefits and services: Which factors contribute to migrants’ understanding of the welfare state and how this knowledge impacts their access to the welfare state. Moreover, Verena is very much interested in the role of social networks in these processes. Verena has received the Migration and Societal Change Seed Money twice in order to pursue her research interests. As a member of the Diversity Committee of the Utrecht Young Academy, Verena is also committed to contribute to diversity and inclusion at Utrecht University.
Anouk Smeekes is Assistant Professor at the Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science and the European Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER). Her research interests are in the field of prejudice and intergroup relations. In particular, she studies attitudes towards immigrants and feelings of national belonging among native majority members, with a focus on perceptions of national history and identity.
Tobias H. Stark is assistant professor at the Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science and a researcher at the European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER). With an increasingly ethnically diverse makeup due to international migration, most Western societies experience tensions between ethnic groups and a surge in prejudice among the native population. To understand these processes, Dr. Stark's research focuses on the intersection of racial/ethnic prejudice and intergroup relations in social networks. He studies how prejudices develop within social networks, how prejudices spread through existing social networks, and how prejudices might affect changes in the structure of social networks.
Valentina Di Stasio is Assistant Professor at Utrecht University, where she is affiliated to the European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER). Her research focuses on labour market inequalities and discrimination of ethnic and religious minorities in European societies. She combines survey and field experiments with analysis of quantitative data on labour market integration.
Gonneke Stevens is Associate Professor at Interdisciplinary Social Science. In her research she examines the association between having an immigration background and adolescent mental health and wellbeing, with attention for potential mechanisms such as perceptions of discrimination, social relations and future orientations. Gonneke coordinates the HBSC study, an internationally-comparative study on the health and wellbeing of adolescents in 50 countries that takes place every 4 years.
Frank van Tubergen is Professor of Sociology. His research focuses on the integration of immigrants and their children in western societies. His publications include studies on second-language acquisition, religion, interethnic marriages and friendships, ethnic segregation, prejudice and discrimination, and ethnic inequality in education and the labour market.