Dorottya Szikra is an Associate Professor of Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Social Sciences Társadalomtudományi Kar. Her teaching activities include principles of social policy, the history of social work and social policy and field work seminars. Her PhD dissertation dealt with the first social insurance legislation in Hungary, and gained her PhD summa cum laude in 2003.

Her research has dealt with the white spots of social policy history in Hungary. She published on social insurance legislation in the European Journal of Social Security (Volume 6, Nr. 3, September, 2004). On the history of Hungarian family policies her paper will come out in Child Care and Primary Education in Post-War Europe edited by Hagemann - Allemann-Ghionda (Berghahn Books, forthcoming in 2011). Together with historian Béla Tomka they published “Social Policy in East Central Europe. Major Trends in the 20st Century” in the volume Communist Welfare Pathways: Theorizing Social Policy Transformations in Central and Eastern Europe edited by Cerami and Vanhuysse (Palgrave Macmillan 2009).

Recently her interest turned to comparative family policies. She has published a paper on six European countries’ family policies (in Hungarian) and on the historical roots Polish and Hungarian family policies

She is a member of board of the European Social Policy Analysis Network (ESPAnet) (European Social Policy Analysis Network) and has been the head of the organizing commettee of the 8th ESPAnet Conference, held in Budapest 2-4 September. of the (http://www.espanet2010.net/en/5/Streams.page ).