Dr Ulrike M Vieten is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Sociology of Gender, Migration and Racisms, who joined Queen's University Belfast as one of the QUB Fellows, in 2015. 

Dr Vieten was awarded a Doctor in Philosophy (PhD) by the University of East London (UEL), England, in 2008, and a MA in Gender & Ethnic Studies by the University of Greenwich, also Britain, in 2004. In Germany she read Law (Bremen) and Social Sciences (Oldenburg, MA), and worked as a consulter on gender equality implementation and law in the 1990s.

Before coming to Belfast, Dr Vieten held various post-doc positions and Research Fellowships at the VU Amsterdam, the University of Sheffield and the University Luxembourg, and was living in Leeds (Yorkshire) until 2015.

Her new monograph 'Loss and Liquid Citizenship in Europe: The Postmigration Condition in an Age of Populism'  is published with Routledge. Inspired by the late Zygmunt Bauman and his concept of 'liquid' the book interrogates the symbolic and legal boundaries between citizen and migrant status, foregrounding the all encompassing situation of living in postmigration societes.

Going beyond the nation state's sociological lens Dr Vieten incorporates cosmopolitan and interdisciplinay (feminist-intersectional) methodologies in her research. She is a comparativist, looking at the transformation of (European) societies and considering the increasing meaning of transnational identities.

Theoretically, Dr Vieten is inspired by feminist thinkers such as Nancy Fraser, Iris Marion Young, bell hooks, Kimberle Crenshaw, Nira Yuval-Davis, but also Sylvia Walby with respect to her work on the notion of 'European societalization'.

Since 2020 Dr Vieten is a member of  the English activist-academic group 'Social Scientists Against Hostile Environment -Social Scientists Against the Hostile Environment (wordpress.com) )

• Dr Vieten's expertise on racialised and gendered group boundaries ('othering of difference') also in the context of global and European far right populism and racism is recognized internationally. She contributes regularly to media debates ( e.g. EURONEWS feature; BBC/Ulster Radio or political blogs). In the wake of the EU parliament election in June 2024, she was invited to several talks in Paris and Brussels speaking about the normalisation of the far right in Europe, e.g. Ireland. 
• Her (international) expertise in the field of gendered migration and the situation of refugees is esteemed, particularly. Dr Vieten was appointed External Examiner to the MA Refugee Integration, Dublin City University (DCU), Ireland ,in 2022.

In September 2022, she published her second monograph (co-authored with Scott Poynting), Normalization of the Global Far-Right: Pandemic Disruption?

The book is a timely intervention in ongoing debates on everyday racisms, and the normalization of extremist views, globally (e.g. in Europe, but also Australia) also taking into account the post March 2020 pandemic situtation and implications for this debate.

• Between January 2020 and end of 2024, Dr Vieten was Editor-in- Chief of the peer reviewed European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, one of the flagship journals of the European Sociological Association (ESA).
• Between April and July 2023 as part of her Sabbatical, Dr Vieten was a Visiting Research Fellow in Australia, based at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Alfred Deakin University, Melbourne (Australia).

Dr Vieten does have particular expertise in Gender, Ethnic and Sexualities Studies. Since 2016 her work focuses on the rise of the racist far right in different European station states, and internationally, while investigating the ways a normalisation of anti-immigrant rhetoric, anti-Muslim racism and neo-nationalist politics emerged.

Her research engages theoretically and empirically with the (de-)construction of racialised, classed and gendered group boundaries, looking at processes of normalization and the critique of it. Another way of capturing this is asking how othering operates in discourses and in different situated historical contexts and how the tension between difference and alterity plays out.

Dr Vieten has published widely on the shifting notions of difference and otherness, in the context of gendered cosmopolitanisms, far-right populisms and archives of racisms, in Europe.

Foremost, Dr Vieten is interested in processes of European societalisation, and the emergence of multi-layered transnational identities. She is a comparativist, who applies a range of qualitative methods (e.g. Critical Discourse Analysis; visual methods/ semiotics; narrative methods). Having worked academically in the Netherlands, Luxembourg and England before coming to Northern Ireland, countries of expertise include: Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Poland, Austria, Turkey and more recently, India.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/international-collaboration-exploring-visualizing-female-vieten-bma8e

Dr Vietens' research has been funded by the British Council/ Newton Fund; Northern Ireland Department for the Economy (DfE)/ Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister (OFMDFM), Stormont.

The pilot study 'Loss and the Language of Dance' (2017-2018), for example, explored how the experience of loss can be culturally translated across different countries and collective memories, such as Northern Ireland and  Turkey.

For details on the perfromance and Turkish dance company, who collaborated with Dr Vieten https://ciplakayaklar.com/en/show/hicbir-sey-yerinde-degil/

Before 2002

Before migrating to London/ UK, in 2002, and embarking on an academic career, Dr Vieten worked professionally (Organisational Sociology) on gender equality implementation as far as Germany is concerned.

The legal commentary in the field of gender equality and German anti-discimination law was published in 2002:

'Frauengleichstellungsgesetze des Bundes und der Laender', (2002), co-authored with Prof Dr Dagmar Schiek, Prof Dr Heike Dieball et al., published with the BUND Verlag in Frankfurt/ Main.

Beyond 2002

Dr Vieten co-edited with Prof Nira Yuval-Davis (UEL), The Situated Politics of Belonging (also with Prof Kalpana Kannabiran), published in 2006 (with SAGE).

In 2012, Dr Vieten's first MONOGRAPH was published with ASHGATE (by now with ROUTLEGE): 

Gender and Cosmopolitanism in Europe: A Feminist Approach

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315583877/gender-cosmopolitanism-europe-ulrike-vieten

Book Reviews are here: 

Leanne Dawson in the Journal of Contemporary European Studies (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14782804.2013.766468) • Maki Kimura in Gender & Education http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09540253.2013.868859#.Uwn2V4UtWls

In 2016, Dr Vieten published the co-edited book (with G. Valentine) 'Cartographies of Differences: Interdisciplinary Perspectives', this book is now available (August 2018) as OPEN ACCESS.

https://www.peterlang.com/view/product/46955?tab=aboutauthor&format=MOBI

Dr Vieten's theoretical interest in the tension between processes of normalisation (and the critique of it) on the one hand and notions of democratic inclusion led first to a symposium she organised in Amsterdam in 2012; and second, in 2014 to an edited collection:

REVISITING IRIS MARION YOUNG ON NORMALISATION, INCLUSION and DEMOCRACY

In 2022, she published her second monograph (with Scott Poyinting), Normalization of the Global Far Right: Pandemic Disruption?

https://www.emerald.com/insight/publication/doi/10.1108/9781839099564

(Emerals Insight)

• Dr Vieten was a Visiting Research Fellow in Melbourne (Australia), at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, between mid of April and beginning of July 2023.

Her talk at the ADI in MAY 2023 had been recorded and is available via YOUTUBE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJECi4yv4WY&t=6s

• Internationally and professionally Dr Vieten is organised with the International Sociological Association (ISA), since 2003. Between 2010 and summer 2018 she was elected Board Member of the ISA Research Committee on Racism, Nationalism, Indigeneity and Ethnicity (RC05).

As part of these international activities she convened and contributed to different ISA Fora and World Congresses of Sociology, e.g. in Durban/ SA (2006), Goeteborg/ Sweden (2010) Buenos Aires/ Argentina (2012), Yokohama/ Japan (2014), Vienna/ Austria (2016), Toronto/ Canada (2018), and the latest, in Melbourne (Australia), in 2023. The latter took place end of June until beginning of July where Dr Vieten convened a RC05 panel on the Normalization of the Global Far Right (with Prof Scott Poynting), and gave  a paper at another panel releated to her new book project, on 'Liquid Citizenship and the post-migration condition'.

• Since 2019, Dr Vieten is member of the Sociological Association Ireland (SAI), and between 2018 and 2025 she was member of the European Sociology Association (ESA).
• Between January 2020 and January 2025, she was Editor-in-Chief of the refereed European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology.

TEACHING at QUB -

Convenor of:

• MA Conflict and Social Justice  (Mitchell Institute)-  Dissertation Module       -  CSJ7002 (2017-2019)
• Dr Vieten also contributed with a specially designed slot on 'gender, conflict and justice' to the Theoretical Core Module Global Concepts and Practices of Conflict Transformation -  CSJ7001 (2017-2019)

In the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work (SSESW) she convened in 2019/2020 the 

• MRs Module  - Approaches to Social Research, SOC9012

and is convening the new elective module (SOC9082), 'Global Migration, Diaspora and Citizenship' on the MRs Sociology of Global Inequality

Dr Vieten convenes since 2019/2020 on the undergraduate Sociology program

• Sociology Elective  - Understanding Gender & Migration (SOC2051)  - since 2019/ 2020

This module responds to the need to expand an explicit focus on gender in mainstream sociological teaching and thinking in SSESW, and connecting gender to ongoing international debates on migration.

In the beginning, global, regional as well as intra-Europan migration issues (e.g. EU citizenship, cross border mobility) were prominent, but due to the post-Brexit situation, affecting NI and Ireland in particular ways, the module delivers a revised approach focusing on global migration, also taking into account the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, post-2022.

• Sociology - Mandatory - Qualitative Research Skills, SOC2003 (2020/2021; 2021/22)
• Dissertation Modules (CRM3002/ SOC3007) from spring term 2024 and continuing.

Dr Vieten was involved in the curriculum development and delivery of the theory module ('Theories, Frameworks and Concepts') as part of the innovative Integrated PhD (IPhD), launched in 2020.

Before coming to NI, and teaching at QUB, Dr Vieten was involved in teaching, designing and convening modules at British universities (UEL/ London Metropolitan University), in the Netherlands (VU Amsterdam) as well as in Germany (University of Applied Studies, Hanover) on 

Undergraduate Teaching/ modules (between 2004 and 2008)

• Communication and Media
• Youth Cultures
• Media Meanings
• Global Justice and Human Rights
• Globalisation and Society
• Gender & Race

• Diversity, Difference and Identity in Organisations, Winter term 2011/2012 (VU Amsterdam)

Postgraduate module/ workshop

on 'Roma Studies' (2001-2002), University of Applied Studies Hanover ('Social Work')

Successfully supervised PhDs:

• Netherlands

Dr Melanie Eijberts (2013). Migrant Women Shout It Out Loud. The Integration/ Participation Strategies and Sense of Home of First- and Second-Generation Women of Moroccan and Turkish Descent. VU University Amsterdam (cuma sum laude).

•  UK/ Northern Ireland

Emily Mitchell-Bajic (2022), The Silencing of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Survivors in the Post-Yugoslav Space, Belfast, DfE funded scholarship

Salah Uddin (2024). Forced Migration of Rohyngia Community from Myanmar: Examining the consequences, challenges and policy options of international humanitarian aid mobilizations within host and migrant communities in Bangladesh.

Ongoing PhD supervision:

Judith Atwell, An Ethnographic challenge to Resettlement as a “durable solution”: Syrian refugees and Northern Ireland. - DfE funded scholarship.

In September 2022, Dr Vieten was appointed as the External Examiner to the MA program 'Refugee Integration', Dublin City University, Ireland.