Ruud Koopmans (born 2 February 1961, in Uithoorn) is a Dutch sociologist and professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin. His research focuses on migration, social integration and transnationalization.
Biography
A native of Uithoorn, Ruud Koopmans studied political science at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), where he obtained a MA in 1987. In 1992, he received a PhD from UvA for his dissertation on the post-war social movements and political system in West Germany, which he wrote under the supervision of Hanspeter Kriesi. After a short stint as researcher at the Social and Cultural Planning Office in The Hague, Koopmans joined the WZB Berlin Social Science Center in 1994, where he continues to work today (2019) as research director of the department on migration, integration and transnationalization. In addition to his position at the WZB, Koopmans worked from 2003 to 2010 as professor of sociology at the Free University of Amsterdam and has been since 2010 a guest professor on political science at UvA. Moreover, Koopmans became professor of sociology and migration research at the Humboldt University of Berlin in 2013. In terms of professional duties, Koopmans performs or has performed editorial duties for the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, International Journal of Comparative Migration Studies, Mobilization and the American Journal of Sociology, among others. He is notably a member of the board of trustees of the German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM) and of the academic advisory board of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF).
Research
Ruud Koopmans' research fields include immigration and the integration of migrants, ethnic inequality and ethno-cultural conflicts, religious fundamentalism, the politics of globalization, social movements and evolutionary sociology. Many of Koopmans' research articles, especially on immigration, have been co-authored with Paul Statham.
Research on social movements
Ruud Koopmans' earliest field of research has been the analysis of social movements in Western Europe. Together with Hanspeter Kriesi, Jan Willem Duyvendak and Marco Giugni, Koopmans has extensively studied the relationship between the structure of political opportunities and the mobilisation patterns of social movements in Western Europe in the 1970s and 1980s. In particular, Koopmans highlights in his analysis of West German protest movements from 1965 to 1989 how facilitation, repression and likelihood of success frame activists' choices among strategies of innovation, increased participation or increased militancy. Relatedly, in research co-authored with Duyvendak, he shows that anti-nuclear movements' success in opposing nuclear energy has been determined mainly by the movements' ability to seize political opportunities by changing public opinion and mobilizing followers, no matter the shape of the evidence upon which the anti-nuclear movement's claims were based. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Koopmans continued to contribute further to the study of protest, making e.g. the case for political claims analysis and protest event analysis as methodological advances, and advocating in favour of political opportunity structure as analytical framework.