NOS Youth News podcast In a recent episode of the NOS Youth News podcast, hosts Annabelle Zandbergen and Pien Leerink spoke with sociologist Tom Nijs about political polarization. Nijs discusses why politicians so often clash, the impact this has on those following political debate, and how cooperation remains possible despite disagreement. He also shares a…

In the NPO series Hoedan, Rui (24), adopted from China, talks about the feeling that her Chinese appearance doesn’t match who she feels she is on the inside. Researcher Tom Nijs spoke in the video about identity denial, Asian racism, and possible strategies for dealing with it, showing how research insights make their way to…

This study, co-written by Tobias Stark and published by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, examined whether adolescents’ friendships with members of a primary outgroup also lead to more positive attitudes toward other, secondary outgroups: Zingora, T., Bracegirdle, C., Stark, T. H., & Spiegler, O. (2026). Outgroup friendships and social influence in the development…

Discover our paper published by Social Networks on VINA: A new engaging and ethical interface to collect social network data: Tom Nijs, Tobias H. Stark, Zsófia Boda, Introducing VINA: An engaging and ethically responsible interface to collect social network data including cognitive social structures on smartphones, Social Networks, Volume 87, 2026, Pages 92-102, ISSN 0378-8733,…

Lexin is visiting Nynke Niersink at Carnegie Mellon University, United States of America. Together, they work on a paper comparing the predictive power of homophily preferences that are based on self-reported ethnic background and the perception of the belonging of classmates.

Lexin Chen’s 1st paper of her dissertation was published in the Journal of Research on Adolescence. She shows that dual identifiers typically do not realize their potential to form interethnic friendships. Although they are popular among both students with and without a migration background, dual identifiers prefer mainly those who also have a migration background…

A working paper introducing our new software VINA has been made available at SSRN and can be cited as: Nijs, T.; Stark, T.H.; and Boda, Z. (February 10, 2026). Introducing VINA: An Engaging and Ethically Responsible Interface To Collect Social Network Data Including Cognitive Social Structures on Smartphones . Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6327198 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6327198 The software is…

Angelos is visiting Verónica Benet-Martínez at University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. Together, they work on a paper assessing the effects of actual and perceived ethnic segregation in school classes on feelings of school belonging and prejudice. They make use of the school data, which we collected with the VINA tool, to examine the perceived structure…

Anniek Schlette visited Zsofia Boda at the University of Essex, United Kingdom, from October to December 2025. Together, they worked on a new research paper on the recognition of dual identifiers using our newly collected school data, which includes peer recognition and perceived networks.

Tobias Stark presented the latest insights from the DUALNETS project, our software VINA, and novel multilayer ERGMs to model cognitive social structures at the Mitchell Centre Seminar Series at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom.