Lian van Vemde is a postdoctoral researcher at the European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER) and the Interuniversity Centre for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS). In March 2025, she obtained her PhD with her dissertation entitled 鈥淐reating Inclusive Societies: Fostering Belonging and Positive Intergroup Relations in Culturally Diverse Classrooms鈥� at Utrecht University. In her doctoral research, Lian examined how schools, teachers, and classmates can contribute to positive attitudes toward and relationships among diverse groups, and to feelings of belonging in the classroom and society.
In her dissertation, Lian showed that schools and classrooms can indeed be places where positive interethnic attitudes, relationships, and feelings of belonging can be fostered, but that this depends on the opportunity for positive (intergroup) contact with peers and the teacher. I also showed that the effects of this contact depend on the diversity beliefs and attitudes of the teacher and classmates.
In her current post-doc project, she is investigating how young people perceive their own ethnic background and how they perceive this in their classmates. The focus is on how this affects their daily experiences at school and social relationships.
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