I am an Associate Professor at the Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science and a member of the European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER). My research broadly deals with group identities, immigrant integration, and intergroup relations in multi-ethnic societies.

I was trained in both sociological and social-psychological research traditions. I completed a PhD in sociology at Utrecht University on the topic of interethnic contacts in Western countries. Using nationally representative longitudinal surveys of immigrants in the Netherlands, Germany, and Canada, I examined the development of immigrants’ contacts with natives during their residence in the host country and identified socio-demographic determinants of such interethnic contacts.

My subsequent research was of social-psychological character. I first worked on a postdoctoral project at Utrecht University, Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science, examining national identification in the Netherlands among ethnic minorities and native Dutch, as well as ethnic and religious identification of ethnic minorities, and how these affect intergroup relations. Then I was a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Psychology at University of Queensland, Australia, funded by the Endeavour Research Fellowship Award. Together with Prof. Jolanda Jetten I worked on post-migration relations between immigrant groups coming from the same conflict area. The focus was on ethnic groups from former Yugoslavia living in Australia. Afterwards, I returned to Utrecht University to a position of assistant and then associate professor.

In 2016 I was elected as a member of the Utrecht Young Academy (UYA). 

I was the Principal Investigator in a project about collective psychological ownership and intergroup relations (OWNERS) funded by a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant (2017-2023). Currently I am a consortium member and work package leader in a project on the changing colonial heritage in Europe (CONCILIARE) funded by Horizon Europe (2024-2027).