Isabelle van der Vegt is an assistant professor at the Department of Sociology at Utrecht University. Her research focuses on extremism and threats of violence. She obtained her PhD in Security and Crime Science from University College London, and worked as a scientific project manager for the Research and Documentation Centre (WODC) of the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security. The Dutch Research Council awarded her a Veni talent grant (2026-2029) for the project: From threat to violence? Assessing the relationship between language and behavior in threats to public figures. She is also involved with the Check je Feed! project, a longitudinal research program on online hate among adolescents.
Isabelle’s research focuses on online hate, extremism, and threats to public figures studied through the lens of text data. That is, how can we make use of computational linguistic methods to better understand these phenomena? She has published on these topics in various journals, including the Journal of Computational Social Science, Behavior Research Methods, and Crime Science. Isabelle is part of the editorial board of the Journal of Threat Assessment and Management and a co-chair of the European Network for Open Criminology.
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