dr. A.P.M. Veldboer (Lex)

Lex Veldboer was appointed Professor of Urban Social Work in spring 2017. In 2023 he became Scientific Director of Centre of Expertise Just City. He is also the coordinator of the Werkplaats Sociaal Domein Amsterdam (a cooperation between higher social work education and 15 local social workplaces) of the Amsterdam metropolitan area. His work as a professor focuses on social work in deprived neighbourhoods in urban agglomerations, known as 'development neigbourhoods’ in Amsterdam. They are areas of great poverty, high social exclusion and ethnic diversity, low social organisation and high organisational complexity. Social workers and other professionals and volunteers work together in these areas under difficult circumstances to improve the position of disadvantaged city dwellers. Research questions include how do they do this, what dilemmas do they face, and which initiatives involving outreach work, prevention, proximity and informal support actually contribute to reducing social exclusion in these areas. Besides coordinating the research and related development processes of the urban professorship and the regional social workshops, Veldboer is also thesis supervisor of the Social Work and Urban Management Master’s programmes.

Veldboer studied community development (opbouwwerk) at the Twente Social Academy (foundation course) and political science at the University of Amsterdam. He received his PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 2010 for his thesis on middle-class residents' engagement with their neighbours in urban renewal areas. From 2004 to 2014, he was a member of the Political Sociology Programme Group at the University of Amsterdam. Prior to his appointment as Professor Urban Social Work, he was senior researcher and programme leader at the (former) AUAS research group Outreach Work and Innovation. Before that he worked as a researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam (for the special professorship Scientific Foundations of Community Work) and at several research institutes, including the Verwey-Jonker Institute (a social research institute). He worked In the mid-1990s for several years as an addiction-care policy officer for the Municipality of Amsterdam.

Veldboer's earlier research focused on a variety of issues related to the social and physical neighbourhood approach and investigated how people live together in mixed neighbourhoods, the effects of urban renewal, and whether welfare recipients experience the compulsory ‘work for social benefits’ as being fair. He has published on these issues (with authors such as Jan Willem Duyvendak, Radboud Engbersen and Reinout Kleinhans) in reports, books and in various national and international journals.