Sonja Bekker

Board member

Biography by Sonja Bekker

Sonja is interested in employment and social policies, within a European context. In particular, her reseach focuses on the labour market position of ‘atypical’ groups such as people with fixed-term or part-time jobs, young workers and people experiencing in-work-poverty. The European dimension of her research includes EU governance of social policies, for instance within the framework of the European Semester. Lately, She has been exploring the Digital Welfare State and the way in which new technologies are used to provide income and re-integration services to people. She was a partner in the Horizon 2020 project on in-work-poverty (WorkYP – workingyetpoor.eu). Moreover, she is a member of the steering committee of the International Working Party on Labour Market Segmentation.

She co-leads the new research cluster on Empirical Legal Studies into Institutions for Conflict Resolution (ERI). She is a board member of the newly erected Empirical Legal Studies Academy of the Netherlands. Morover, she coördinates the cross-cutting theme ‘Welfare, participation and citizenship in a digital world’. She is also a fellow of the Open Science community of Utrecht University, and she is a member of the editorial board of the Dutch Journal for Law and Employment (Tijdschrift voor Recht en Arbeid).

As off 2017 she holds the Jean Monnet chair on European Social Policy and Employment Relations.