Present projects

Possible projects
In the coming years, I intend to undertake a number of small research projects. Some of my theoretical and methodological interests include gentrification, discourse analysis, network analysis, urban political economy and (Bourdieu’s) field analysis. Empirical interests include urban political history, drug use and drug policy, residential segregation, the emergence of a workfare state, social movements, urban mega-projects and cyber politics. If you are a student who seeks supervision for research into these topics or a colleague who wants to explore possibilities for collaborative research, please get in touch.

Present projects
I work with Vincent Traag and Jeroen Bruggeman on a network approach to analyze the form and dynamism of political conflict. We apply our approach to a study of Dutch integration politics.

Together with Walter Nicholls, I analyze cities and social movements. In our comparative research project, we attempt to identify and explain changing patterns of political mobilization in European and American cities.

I work on the research project ‘Ethnic contact or conflict in contemporary Dutch cities? The impact of urban culture on ethnocentrism and right-wing populist voting’. The project has been conceived by several colleagues at the sociology department of the Erasmus University Rotterdam and aims to answer the question under what circumstances inter-ethnic contact leads to understanding or conflict.

I am a member of a network of researchers who are committed to the comparative study of urban marginality. Tom Slater of Edinburgh University initiated the network and acquired funding to organize meetings where we present research findings and discuss collective research projects.

Thesis-project
My PhD-thesis ‘Dynamics of power in Dutch integration politics’ mapped and explained the transformations in the debate on integration and in integration policy (supervisors: Jan Willem Duyvendak and Maarten Hajer). My MA-thesis ‘The social control of deprived neighborhoods’ compared the evolution of urban policy in Belgium and the Netherlands (supervision: Eva van Kempen). Under publications you can find references to a number of individual and collaborative research projects that I undertook alongside and in between my thesis-work.

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