Maarten van Ham is a Professor of Urban Geography at the Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. He studied Economic Geography at Utrecht University, where he received his MSc in 1998 and his PhD in 2002. Maarten was a visiting Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin (2001 and 2003) and worked at Utrecht University and the University of Amsterdam before moving to the University of St Andrews in 2006. In St Andrews Maarten was director of research of the Centre for Housing Research (CHR). In 2011 Maarten moved to Delft University of Technology where he has a full chair position.

His research interests can be broadly defined as the causes and consequences of family migration: why do people move residence and what are the consequences of moving for the housing, household and labour career? Initially his research focused on the links between residential location, migration and occupational achievement, including overeducation. In recent years his interests have broadened to include: selective mobility into and out of neighbourhoods; neighbourhood effects (see: www.neighbourhoodeffects.org); migration and home ownership in Europe; mixed-ethnic unions; and international marriage migration. He currently works on projects in the UK, Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania and the Netherlands. Maarten published in international journals such as Environment and Planning A; Urban Studies; Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies; Housing Studies; Demography; Demographic Research; Regional Studies; Population, Space and Place; Applied Economics Quarterly; Journal of Urban Economics. In 2014 Maarten has won an ERC grant. See: www.deprivedhoods.eu


He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in March 2009.