Matthijs Kalmijn

Matthijs Kalmijn is a full Professor of Sociology at the University of Groningen and a senior researcher at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI), part of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). He previously held a professorship at the University of Amsterdam and has established himself as a leading demographer specializing in family dynamics, life course trajectories, and intergenerational relationships across multiple European contexts.

His research interests span family sociology, life course studies, intergenerational relations, marriage and divorce, migration and ethnicity, demography, and social inequality. Kalmijn has pioneered multi-actor survey methodologies that capture complex family structures and intergenerational dynamics, significantly advancing our understanding of how family relationships evolve across the life course and across different societal contexts.

Kalmijn's publication record demonstrates consistent scholarly productivity with 15 recent articles (2023-2025) examining diverse aspects of family dynamics, migration patterns, and demographic transitions. His work shows a clear trajectory from traditional family sociology toward more complex examinations of transnational families, retirement migration, and the intersection of demographic processes with social inequality.

• Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW)

As a dedicated mentor, Kalmijn has supervised numerous PhD students across both the University of Groningen and University of Amsterdam, with recent students focusing on topics including international retirement migration, return migration, family complexity, and geographic mobility of immigrant children. His research projects have included major national and international studies such as the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (NKPS), Netherlands Longitudinal Lifecourse Study (NELLS), Parents and Children in the Netherlands (OKiN), and the International Retirement Migration study.