I am a fourth and last year PhD student in Sociology at the University of Groningen and the ICS graduate school. As I always had an interest in how ethnic minorities integrated in the Netherlands and how the host society reacts to this I am very happy to now be involved in a project that studies exactly that (see the description of the PhD project). 

Firstly, I am involved in The Arnhem School Study (TASS). Coordinated by Tobias Stark, we gathered data in which we follow young adolescents from all primary schools in five low SES problem neighborhoods to almost all secondary schools in one Dutch city. With my PhD project I add to this study with 'The Arnhem Parents Project'. With a team of Dutch and Turkish interviewers we interviewed part of the parents of the adolescents in TASS. With this data we can examine how the school but also parents have an influence on the ethnic integration of ethnic minority as well as majority children.

Secondly, I am involved in research at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with Jaana Juvonen and Sandra Graham. Here we study how same- versus cross-ethnic friendships affect how students experience their multi-ethnic school environment. 

I will finish my PhD project in August this year, and hope to pursue my work as a researcher in academia after that.