Rik Huizinga is an Assistant Professor in Urban Geography at the Human Geography and Spatial Planning Department of Utrecht University (UU). His research draws upon debates in urban social and cultural geography to investigate new and problematic social and cultural relations in the context of globalisation, migration and societal change. Rik’s main areas of research include topics around gender, masculinity and intersectionality; refugees, migration and settlement; and young people, identity and equality. He is also interested in issues related to qualitative and participatory methods such as positionality, reflexivity and research ethics. His work draws attention to the ways in which structural forms of marginalisation (ageism, racism, sexism, capitalism) shape peoples’ everyday lives and highlights the variegated forms of resistance people display to counter exclusionary practices. 

His doctoral dissertation ‘Making Home in Forced Displacement: Young Syrian Men Navigating Geographies of Migration, Masculinities and Belonging’ applies a relational and intersectional perspective to study the gendered politics of home after forced resettlement. As a postdoctoral researcher in the HERA funded project ‘Refugee Youth and Public Space’, he investigated the dynamic ways in which young asylum seekers and refugees experience, use and claim public space to secure a sense of belonging in a hostile climate. As an ambassador of the UU strategic theme ‘Dynamics of Youth’, Rik currently specialises in ‘Geographies of Youth’ to explore how young people negotiate insecurities and challenges in their transition to adulthood. 

Rik has published on gender, masculinities and forced migration-related issues in high-quality journals such as Gender, Place and Culture, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Geoforum and Urban Geography. He also co-authored the entry on ‘Masculinities’ in the International Encyclopedia of Human Geography by Elsevier. He is currently a member of the Gender, Sexuality and Migration (GenSeM) steering group of IMISCOE.