Tom Nijs

Tom Nijs is a researcher at the European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER) and the Interuniversity Centre for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS) at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, with concurrent appointment as a Researcher in Governance and Pluralism at Erasmus University Rotterdam beginning in 2025. Nijs studies collective psychological and epistemic ownership, intergroup relations, and the experiences of second-generation immigrants, with particular attention to how misperceptions and polarization affect attitudes toward national belonging and territorial claims. Recent work by Nijs examines the mechanisms through which descriptive norms mitigate polarization concerns, how direct and indirect intergroup contact shapes attitudes, and the dynamics of collective ownership narratives among majority populations and immigrant communities. Nijs contributes to understanding how beliefs about national belonging and resource distribution intersect with questions of who has legitimate claims to place and knowledge within diverse societies.