Twan Huijsmans

Postdoctoral Researcher & Lecturer, Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam

Watercolor illustration of a Dutch river town, with rural countryside and a windmill on one side and an urban skyline on the other

About

Twan Huijsmans

I am a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam. I hold a PhD in Sociology/Political Science (2024, UvA), with a dissertation on “Our Place in Politics: Urban-rural political divergence and how place affects political attitudes.”

My research explores how people’s experiences in the contexts of their daily life shape their perceptions of politics and society. Having grown up in the countryside while studying and working in large cities, I have always been interested in how local context shapes political outlooks. By studying this, I try to answer broader questions about how structural inequalities between groups feed into political polarization and declining support for liberal-democratic institutions. Read more on the Research page.

I currently work in the CRITICALTRUST project (on political skepticism and distrust, led by Tom van der Meer) and the Dutch Parliamentary Election Study/Nationaal Kiezersonderzoek (DPES/NKO) 2025.

Contact

Email: t.m.huijsmans@uva.nl

See the Contact page for more.