Dorottya Szikra is Senior Researcher at the Centre for Social Sciences, Budapest, and Visiting Professor at the Department of Gender Studies and Department of Political Science, CEU Vienna.  is currently also associated with CEU Democracy Institute where she leads a CIVICA reseach project entitled Welfare, Democracy, and Populism under the COVID-19 Crisis (WELDECO). 

Szikra's main research field is welfare state and family policy development in Central and Eastern Europe. Between 2016 and 2020 she acted as the co-chair of the European Social Policy Analysis Network (ESPAnet). In 2016 she served as the Marie Jahoda Visiting Chair in International Gender Studies at the Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany. 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 since 2020 the Journal of European Social Policy.