Dr F. Bovenkerk (1943) has been named Professor by Special Appointment in the FORUM Frank Buijs Radicalisation Studies Chair in the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), effective 1 January 2009. The chair was designated on behalf of the FORUM foundation, Institute for Multicultural Development, and is placed with the Institute for Migration and Ethnical Studies (IMES) at the UvA.

Cultural anthropologist Frank Bovenkerk has conducted research into and published on migration, discrimination, multiculturalism, organised crime, ethnicity and crime, methodology and cultural criminology. Currently, his main interest lies in the study of organised crime and criminality among ethnic groups. As professor by special appointment, his focus will be on promoting social science research into radicalism and extremism. In particular, he will be examining similarities between various forms of radicalisation and extremism, factors that make people prone to radicalisation and the determinants of radicalisation itself. Bovenkerk will also be working on the development of international comparative research into radicalisation and extremism.

Since 1988, Bovenkerk has been Professor of Criminology at the Willem Pompe Institute for Criminal Law Studies of Utrecht University (UU). In 1976, he earned his PhD with a thesis on emigration and remigration of Surinamers to the Netherlands. From 1974 he worked at the Institute for Cultural Anthropology of UU where, in 1978, he published the results of realistic experiments demonstrating racial discrimination in the Netherlands: Omdat zij anders zijn. Bovenkerk is best known for his biography of the first Dutch pentita who cooperated with police in Italy: La Bella Bettien (1995) and for De Maffia van Turkije (1998) that he published together with Yücel Yesilgöz. In 2001 he published the book Misdaadprofielen (Meulenhoff). In 2004-2005 Bovenkerk was part of the criminology committee that researched organised crime in the Netherlands on behalf of the Parliamentary Committee Van Traa, which examined the investigation techniques of the Netherlands police. Since 1999 he has headed a wide-ranging study into multiculturalism in criminal procedure.

The FORUM Frank Buijs Chair

The chair is named in part for UvA political scientist Dr Frank Buijs († September 2007). Buijs conducted pioneering work in the field of radicalisation studies and played an important role in setting up the Centre for Radicalism and Extremism Studies (CRES), of which the IMES is secretary and which has been supported by FORUM from the outset. The CRES is an interuniversity research network whose aim is to launch and coordinate various research projects. As professor by special appointment in the Forum Frank Buijs Chair, Bovenkerk will play a coordinating role in CRES.

FORUM, Institute for Multicultural Development, is an independent knowledge institute that wishes to actively promote cohesion within Dutch society by stimulating shared citizenship on all levels. FORUM achieves this by providing knowledge, stimulating developments and influencing positions that strengthen cohesion within Dutch society.