Biography
Sanne van Oosten is a Senior Researcher at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS). Her research focuses on ethnic, gender, racial, religious and sexual inequalities in childcare, employment, housing and politics. She completed her PhD in political science at the University of Amsterdam in 2024 on how voters react to diversity in politics and Muslim politicians. After that, she worked at COMPAS as a postdoctoral researcher and later country-PI in the Horizon 2020-funded EqualStrength project on (the experiences of) discrimination of ethnic and racial minorities in the UK, Belgium, Czechia, Hungary, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland. Now, she is the PI of a project on discrimination of young ethnic minorities that aims to disentangle which employer policies reduce the discrimination of young jobseekers whose ethnic group status intersects with having a criminal record, special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and care-leaver status.
For her PhD research, van Oosten explored the political representation of Muslims in Europe, focusing on both the political views of Muslims as well as how the larger public reacts to their political inclusion. While voters tend not to discriminate against women and ethnic minority politicians (van Oosten et al., 2024a), voters show a substantial negative bias against Muslim politicians (van Oosten, 2026a), irrespective of intersections with gender and migration background (van Oosten, 2025a). Voters expect Muslim politicians to have conservative policy positions (van Oosten, 2022), and when Muslim politicians explicitly say that they have progressive views on gender, sexuality, immigration and integration, the negative bias against Muslim politicians disappears (van Oosten and Aydemir, 2026). Van Oosten coined the term broadstancing to refer to minorities who broaden their (electoral) appeal by distancing themselves from their in-group (van Oosten, 2024). However, broadstancing is a risky strategy because Muslim voters will punish Muslim politicians engaging in this strategy, though to varying extents across policies (van Oosten and Aydemir, 2026). Muslim voters are very likely to vote for the small Muslim-coded Dutch political party DENK because of their identification as Muslim and a desire for substantive representation (van Oosten et al., 2024b), while being very unlikely to vote for the populist radical right party PVV (van Oosten, 2025c), despite claims from political elites that Muslims are likely to vote for the populist radical right (van Oosten, 2025b; 2025c). As these findings come from research based on surveys, it is particularly important that respondents with a migration background are categorised in a manner in which they identify, as taking an identification approach substantially changes research outcomes (van Oosten, 2026b). Moreover, despite the fact that research shows that the general public dislikes Muslim politicians (van Oosten, 2025a; 2026a) who stand for Muslim-coded issues (van Oosten and Aydemir, 2026), it remains important for all people to hear those advocating for Muslim-coded issues such as privacy, protest rights and peace in Iran, Iraq or Palestine loud and clear (van Oosten, 2025d; 2026b).
During her postdoctoral position, van Oosten researched discrimination in childcare, employment and housing as part of the Horizon 2020 EqualStrength project. She co-led the UK data collection with Mariña Fernández-Reino and Paolo Velásquez as part of a consortium of researchers from institutions in the UK, Belgium, Czechia, Hungary, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland. Van Oosten’s research investigated discrimination by gatekeepers based on names of applicants associated as Black and Muslim (Ghekiere et al., 2025). She also researched how minorities frame experiences of discrimination and the implications of discrimination for voting, mental health, and attributions of inequality. In the EqualStrength project, van Oosten has been involved in research scrutinising government policies that may increase discrimination by employers and landlords (the Unlimited Right to Work and Unlimited Right to Rent checks). She has also researched how company size and structure influence whether ethnic minority children are admitted to childcare facilities equally compared to their ethnic majority peers. Her research shows that irrespective of company size and structure, childcare facilities do not discriminate against same-sex parents seeking childcare, though there is some discrimination against same-sex Muslim fathers. From the perspective of minorities, van Oosten explored how education level shapes how minorities understand their experiences of discrimination (the integration paradox). Her innovation lies in questioning the interplay between differing levels of information about what discrimination is, as well as how political attitudes towards the existence of discrimination in society as a whole shape how minoritised individuals understand discrimination.
Currently, van Oosten is leading a project on hiring discrimination against ethnic minority youth in England. With a team of eight PhD researchers, she will investigate the barriers for young ethnic minority jobseekers and those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), care leaver status, mental ill health, criminal records, and job type and give policy recommendations for companies to reduce hiring discrimination. Using randomised correspondence trials, in which the team will send fictional job applications with varying applicant characteristics to real employers, she will explore which hiring policies affect job application outcomes and for whom. They will focus solely on discrimination against young people at the start of their careers because discrimination in this phase of life has a cumulative effect spanning the lifetime and spilling over into different domains of life. They will identify discriminatory practices in the hiring process and propose policies to improve access to opportunities for these disadvantaged groups. Additionally, the project will examine the impact of diversity statements, fair employer badges, company size, and the relationship between diverse company boards and reduced discrimination. The goal is to provide evidence-based recommendations to promote inclusive recruitment practices, contributing to a more equitable labour market and a stronger economy.
Van Oosten has followed courses in topics such as large language models, fair recruitment practices, and experimental methods. She is an experienced user of R statistical software, particularly specialised in ggplot and tidyverse languages. She has coordinated methods lecturers and data collection across teams, conferences, and workshops, and her teaching ranged from research methods to gender and sexuality studies. She has published in leading journals such as Electoral Studies, the European Political Science Review, and Survey Research Methods. She has also given invited talks at University College London (UCL), the University of Reading, Southampton, and the University of Central Florida (UCF).
Van Oosten has been invited to discuss her research on television (Al Jazeera English, Hart van Nederland and Nieuwsuur). She has also featured in radio programs on the BBC (UK), NPR (US), and NOS (NL), to name a few. Her research has featured in in-depth, multi-page Q&A spreads dedicated exclusively to her research and its implications (for instance, in the US New York Magazine’s The Cut, the German Süddeutsche Zeitung, and the Danish Kristeligt Dagblad), and she has commented on the news in The New York Times (US), Haaretz (IS), and NRC (NL), among others. In the past, she has responded to requests from policymakers to provide advice on politics, immigration, integration, and diversity, among others, for Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten (in his role as minister), Amnesty International, and policymakers at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).
Here is a link to Sanne van Oosten’s CV and Bluesky
Select publications
van Oosten, S. (2026a) Affinity voting in Europe: The impact of religion, migration background and gender on preferences for in-group politicians. European Political Science Review, first view. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755773926100393
van Oosten, S. (2026b) Surveying citizens with a migration background: A quantitative study of identification versus categorization. Survey Research Methods, 20(1), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.18148/srm/2026.v20i1.8334
van Oosten, S., & Aydemir, N. (2026) Broadstancing Muslim politicians: Advocating for gender equality erases voter bias against Muslim politicians without causing backlash from Muslim voters. OSF Preprints. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/J5YGQ
van Oosten, S. (2025a) Evaluations of female Muslim politicians in a populist era: Measuring intersectionality using interaction effects and conjoint experiments. Journal of Populism Studies, 1, 1–31. https://doi.org/10.55271/JPS000114
van Oosten, S. (2025b) Do Muslims have different attitudes and voting behaviour than the majority populations of France, Germany and the Netherlands? European Center for Populism Studies. https://doi.org/10.55271/rp00100
van Oosten, S. (2025c) The importance of in-group favouritism in explaining voting for PRRPs: A study of minority and majority groups in France, Germany and the Netherlands. Populism & Politics. European Center for Populism Studies. https://doi.org/10.55271/pp0046
van Oosten, S. (2025d) PhD summary: Minority voting and representation – The impact of religion, migration background and gender on voter preferences for in- and out-group politicians in France, Germany and the Netherlands. Politics of the Low Countries, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.54195/plc.23042
van Oosten, S. (2024) Broadstancers hebben een electoraal voordeel. Binnenlands Bestuur. Retrieved January 5, 2026, from https://www.binnenlandsbestuur.nl/bestuur-en-organisatie/negatieve-vooroordeel-tegen-islamitische-politici-verdwijnt-helemaal-wanneer
van Oosten, S., Mügge, L., & van der Pas, D. (2024a) Race/ethnicity in candidate experiments: A meta-analysis and the case for shared identification. Acta Politica, 59, 19–41. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41269-022-00279-y
van Oosten, S., Mügge, L., Hakhverdian, A., & van der Pas, D. (2024b) What explains voting for DENK: Issues, discrimination or in-group favouritism? Representation, 60(4), 601–623. https://doi.org/10.1080/00344893.2024.2387011
van Oosten, S. (2022) What shapes voter expectations of Muslim politicians’ views on homosexuality: Stereotyping or projection? Electoral Studies, 80, 102553. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2022.102553
