My research interests are in the field of ethnic prejudice, ethnic/national identities, and interethnic relations. In particular, I study how prejudice develops within social networks, how this affects and is affected by people's ethnic/national identities, and how this, in turn, causes changes in the structure of social networks. In my ERC consolidator program, I focus on people's perceptions of others' identities and their social ties. The main argument is that it's not a person's self-reported identification or social relationships that drive other people's behavior toward that person but how these people perceive the person's ethnic/national belonging and their embedding in a social network.

Though many of my projects are on “basic science,” I’m driven by the potential societal impact of my research. That’s why a large part of my attention has been directed at using my insights to develop intervention programs for (primary) schools that are designed to improve interethnic relations. For instance, I have cooperated with practitioners of the programs Discussieren Kun Je Leren, Welkom in Mijn Wijk, and One Globe Kids.

I integrate my work on interethnic relations with my interest in methodological research. For instance, some of my work concerns the improvement of measures of ethnic/racial attitudes and of methods to measure social networks. Together with Jon Krosnick, I have developed a new graphical interface (GENSI) to collect data on egocentric social networks in online surveys. Together with Tom Nijs and Zsofia Boda, I'm currently developing a new graphical software to collect whole network data and egocentric network data with smartphone surveys.