Thijs van Dooremalen is an Assistant Professor within the Governance of Crises research group of the Institute of Security and Global Affairs. He researches how and why events can cause transformations within national public spheres (media, politics, policy making). He employs a mixed methods perspective to do so (big data, qualitative content analysis, interviews) and has analyzed this for a wide diversity of cases: 9/11 and other terrorist attacks, but also elections, Covid, and Eurovision. Much of what Thijs has to say about these matters comes back in his book 'Chasing Events' (see on the right).

More information about Thijs van Dooremalen

Thijs van Dooremalen is an Assistant Professor within the Governance of Crises research group of the Institute of Security and Global Affairs. He researches how and why events can cause transformations within national public spheres (media, politics, policy making).  He employs a mixed methods perspective to do so (big data, qualitative content analysis, interviews) and has analyzed this for a wide diversity of cases: 9/11 and other terrorist attacks, but also elections, Covid, and Eurovision. Much of what Thijs has to say about these matters comes back in his book Chasing Events. You can read the open access introduction and conclusion here and here.  

Thijs is currently analysing what makes successful climate crisis politics and interviewing journalists and politicians about their event responses.

He teaches within the Bachelor Security Studies and Master in Crisis and Security Management on the framing of events and crises, climate crisis politics, and qualitative research methods. He is a member of the faculty’s Ethics Committee and of the Leiden University Funds student grants committee.

Thijs studied Sociology in Utrecht, Mannheim, and Amsterdam and obtained his PhD in Sociology from the University of Amsterdam. As part of his PhD training, he spent research time at Washington University St. Louis, EHESS (Paris Campus), and City University New York. Before joining ISGA, Thijs was a Marie Curie Fellow at KU Leuven. Before that, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs as well as Coordinator of its Research Cluster on Comparative Inequality and Inclusion. In the fall of 2024, he was a visiting scholar at Northwestern University (Chicago).

Publications