Research Interests

Dorottya Szikra, PhD is Research Professor and Head of Research Department at the Centre for Social Sciences and Visiting Professor at CEU Vienna. Szikra's current research interest focuses on democratic backsliding and the welfare state. Her related work include (with Kerem G. Öktem) 2022. An illiberal welfare state emerging? Welfare efforts and trajectories under democratic backsliding in Hungary and Turkey. In Journal of European Social Policy, and a CIVICA reseach project entitled Welfare, Democracy, and Populism under the COVID-19 Crisis (WELDECO) that she carried out in association with CEU Democracy Institute. Her former research primarily focused on welfare state and family policies in Eastern Europe. The outcome of this research is the recent comparative monograph with Cristina Rat and Tomasz Inglot, 2022. Mothers, Families or Children? Family Policy in Poland, Hungary, and Romania, 1945-2020. University of Pittsburgh Press. Between 2016 and 2020 she acted as the co-chair of the European Social Policy Analysis Network (ESPAnet). She has acted as a member of the editorial boards of various journals, including the European Journal of Social Security, the Hungarian on-line journal socio.hu and the Journal of European Social Policy. Between 2021 and 2022 she served as a member of the EC commissioned High-Level Group on the future of social protection and of the welfare state in the EU.