Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, joined the European Commission's newly formed High-Level Group on the Future of Social Protection and of the Welfare State in October 2021. Trained as an economist at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, he received his doctorate from University of Oxford. In his capacity as Dean of the Faculty of the Social Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam, together with Jonathan Zeitlin, he founded the Amsterdam Centre for Contemporary European Studies. He also directed the Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR), the principle think tank in the Netherlands. Between 2014 and 2017, he was Centennial Professor of Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).