Willem Vermeulen was a PhD researcher at NIDI. In his research he investigated the influence of individual and contextual effects on the differences in union dissolution rates between Dutch municipalities. He is mostly interested in the influences of the interaction between the individual and their environment. His origins are not in sociology, but in computational science, in which he received a Master’s degree from the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and Vrije Universiteit (VU). In university Willem analyzed historic Dutch migration flows and the influence of historic cultural identity on migration patterns. This research inspired him to focus on sociology and demography, and the appliance of complex system modelling techniques in the domains.
January 2025 he successfully defended his doctoral thesis entitled ‘Separation risks of married and cohabiting couples: How important is the social context?‘ at the University of Groningen.
He is currently employed at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL – Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving).
Expertise
Divorce, internal migration, historical demography
