I am a professor of Political and Social Philosophy at Utrecht University. My research is in that area, where I have focused on the moral foundations of liberal thought and the relation between civil conflict, democratic virtue and societal stability. My work with my Ph.D. students is on the many aspects of that broad research area too.  

At Utrecht Utrecht, I am currently the vice-dean of BA-programmes in the Faculty Board. I am also the executive director of Charm EU, an innovative collaboration between a number of European Universities that enables new approaches to academic education and exchange. Our aim is to let students from different universities, backgrouds and languages work together on understanding the world's sustainability challenges, and to help solve them by aligning the resources that education, research, innovation, business and society have to offer.