Herman van de Werfhorst

Herman van de Werfhorst is a full-time Professor of Sociology at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy, on leave from the University of Amsterdam. His primary research focuses on educational inequalities, particularly examining disparities by socioeconomic status, migration background, and gender across school trajectories, labor markets, and civic participation. He leads the CLIC (Inequality, welfare and social justice) research cluster and co-directs two major data initiatives: PRIMS (tracking primary-to-secondary school transitions in the Netherlands) and ADKS (a longitudinal study on democratic values and school careers).

Van de Werfhorst holds visiting fellow status at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. His work employs comparative and longitudinal research designs, leveraging large-scale datasets to understand systemic inequities. He supervises a diverse cohort of doctoral researchers exploring topics ranging from gender segregation in education to the role of intercultural networks in academic outcomes.

Recent research emphasizes the pandemic's disproportionate impact on educational trajectories and the role of social embeddedness. He collaborates extensively with international scholars, contributing to debates on meritocracy, intergenerational mobility, and the democratization of education systems.

• Key Affiliations: EUI Department of Political and Social Sciences, WZB Berlin
• Data Projects: PRIMS, ADKS, CLIC
• Methodological Expertise: Comparative analysis, longitudinal studies, register data