Dr. Pearl Dykstra

Biography

Pearl Dykstra is a Professor of Empirical Sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam, appointed in 2009. She previously held the chair in Kinship Demography at Utrecht University and was a senior scientist at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute in The Hague. Dykstra has been involved in significant research leadership roles, including serving as the director of research at the Department of Public Administration and Sociology at Erasmus University from 2015 to 2019. She is the Scientific Director of ODISSEI (Open Data Infrastructure for the Social Science and Economics Innovations in the Netherlands) and has led large-scale research projects focusing on intergenerational solidarity, aging societies, and family change. Notably, she received an ERC Advanced Investigator Grant for her project 'Families in Context', which examines how various contexts influence intergenerational dependencies within families. Dykstra has been awarded various grants for major projects, including the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study and the EU's MULTILINKS project. She is recognized as an expert, having been elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Dutch Social Sciences Council, among other honors. Dykstra continues to contribute as an advisor and expert within the European Commission and various academic councils.

Research Interests