Dr. Barbara Oomen

Biography

Barbara Oomen holds the chair in Sociology of Human Rights at Utrecht University. She supervises PhD research and is involved in the RightsCities project. In June 2022, she worked at University College Roosevelt, Utrecht University's Liberal Arts and Sciences College in Middelburg, where she served as Dean from 2012 to 2016. Her research concerns the interplay between law and society, with a special emphasis on human rights and cultural diversity. Oomen has authored significant books, including 'Global Urban Justice: The Rise of Human Rights Cities' (2016) and 'Rights Slow Home-Coming: Human Rights in the Netherlands' (2014, Cambridge University Press), alongside a wide variety of scholarly articles. She leads the NWO Vici project 'Cities of Refuge' and is involved in the Horizon2020 ETHOS research. At Utrecht, her leadership focuses on Migration and Societal Change. At UCR, she taught courses such as Introduction to Law, Society and Justice, and Introduction to Human Rights. She is a board member of the Roosevelt Foundation Human Rights Cities Network, a member of the Advisory Board of the Netherlands Human Rights Institute, and has served on various influential committees related to constitutional review and human rights. Oomen was a senior Fernand Braudel fellow at the European University Institute in Florence from 2016 to 2017 and initiated a significant program on energy transition in Zeeland in 2019, known as the Young Energy Society Challenge.

Research Interests