dr. GJ (Gijs) Custers, MSc

Biography

Gijs Custers is an assistant professor in the Department of Law, Society and Crime at the Erasmus University Rotterdam.

He is currently developing or involved in the following lines of research:

1) How structural changes (e.g., gentrification, migration, crime levels) relate to territorial stigma over time, and the role of different actors in this context. Through analysing a large corpus of media articles, more insight will be gained into the causes and consequences of territorial stigma, and how it varies across time and space. 

2) How rates of party drug use (e.g., XTC, cocaine, ketamine) and the development of the club- and festival infrastructure intertwine. He is particularly interested in the political economy of this infrastructure and how it relates to the normalisation of drug use. 

His previous work includes studies of social inequality in social class, gentrification, neighbourhood effects, citizen participation, and the effects of social policy on educational mobility. In his research, particular attention has been paid to the National Program Rotterdam South (National Programma Rotterdam Zuid: NPRZ).

Gijs is experienced in applying quantitative methods (including topic modelling, sentiment analysis, matching techniques, multilevel modelling, latent class analysis, and GIS) and qualitative methods (interviewing).