Veerle Buffel

Since October 2023, I am an assistant professor at the Department of Sociology VUB. I studied sociology at Ghent University, where I also did my PhD (2016) and postdoc (2019) about the mental health impact of the economic crisis and medicalization of precarious work from a macro sociologic perspective.

Thereafter, I was a research leader ‘Health economy’ at HIVA (KUL) and a postdoc at the University of Antwerp, where I worked on national and international projects on equal access to care, integrated chronic care and sexual preventive health. I am the principal investigator of the Covid-19 international student well-being study, and co-organizer of the ESHMS (European Society of Health and Medical Sociology) conference in 2024, hosted in Belgium (Antwerp), with as topic 'Intersectionality and inclusion in health sociology'. 

Since 2022, I am also co-founder of Data4PHM, which is an interdisciplinary consortium of researchers (UA, KUL, and VUB) and data owners (IMA, Sciensano, Pharmaflux), to support population health management in Belgium. 

My research can be situated in health sociology and sociology of social inequalities and inclusion, I have a passion for statistics and prefer multidisciplinary research.

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