Dr. Lieke van der Veer

Lieke van der Veer (she/her) is a guest in 2025. She received training in Anthropology and Philosophy and is now based at the Erasmus University Rotterdam (Department of Public Administration and Sociology) and the Delft Technical University (Department of Urbanism). Her current ethnographic research focuses on public policy in anti-discrimination, diversity, welfare, integration, and labor. She does so as a postdoctoral researcher in the project ‘Dilemmas of Doing Diversity.’ In this project she studies knowledge infrastructure, alliances with civil society organizations, and forms of administrative artistry in Dutch bureaucracies. Her doctoral thesis in Social Anthropology (2023) is entitled: ‘Care in a Frictional Field of Forces: Assistance and Advocacy by and for Recent Refugees in Rotterdam.’ Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this thesis explores how refugee-led support initiatives are mediated by funding regimes, by advisors in refugee advocacy who perform as brokers, by citizenship ideals, and by bureaucratic practices of group-making. Lieke held visiting positions at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh (2020) and the University of Cambridge (2025). Research interests and areas of expertise are: cultures of neoliberalism, anthropology of the state, and social movements. Lieke’s work is published in journals including Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies (2020), Journal of Borderland Studies (2021), Voluntas (2022), Urban Planning (2024), Social Analysis (in press), and Anthropological Theory (in press).