Hans Van de Velde is Professor of Sociolinguistics in the Department of Languages, Literature and Communication (TLC), and a member of the Utrecht Institute of Linguistics (ILS). He also works as a senior researcher at Fryske Akademy. 

He deploys and supervises research  in language variation and change, language policy, standardisation, sociophonetics, multilingualism, language contact, minority languages and lexicography. He co-develops the digital language tools for Frisian (www.frysker.nl), and software for the analysis of language variation (visiblesounds.org; led-a.org)

He is fascinated by variation in /r/ , and co-founded the ‘r-atics workshop series. With some colleagues, he tries to develop and propagate laboratory sociolinguistics.