Tuba Bircan is a research fellow at the Centre for Political Research and working on her PhD within the Social Cohesion Indicators in Flanders (SCIF) Project.  She has been conducting a multilevel study based on SCIF survey and municipal level data of Belgium. The core of her PhD is "Ethnocentrism and Community Structure: The case of Flanders (Belgium)". In order to answer the research question whether ethnocentrism can be explained better if the key characteristics of the community the individual lives in are known; the effects of income inequality, unemployment, ethnic diversity, crime and their reflections on the ethnocentrism on individual level are being examined.