As a professor in the social sciences I'm affiliated with LINES (Leuven International and European Studies) at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium. In 2007 and 2008, I was a visiting scholar at the ​Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University. Most of my research focuses on minority politics, nationalism, democratization, and, most recently, restorative justice.

​In 2014, I published Ex (De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam), a book of literary reportage about the former Yugoslavia. In 2006, Berghahn Books published The Romani Movement, and in 2016 I co-edited, with Koen Slootmaeckers and Heleen Touquet, The EU Enlargement and Gay Politics (Palgrave Macmillan). Other work of mine has appeared in literary and news magazines and a range of academic journals, including East European Politics and Societies, Problems of Post-Communism, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and Ethnic and Racial Studies.