Trudie Knijn graduated in sociology at the University of Tilburg and got her PhD at the department of Cultural Psychology of the Radboud University (Nijmegen). Her PhD reserach focused on 'Motherhood between duty and self-development'. Since 1985 she works at Utrecht University, where she became full professor of Interdisciplinairy Social Science in 2003. Currently she is head of the Centre for Social Policy and Intervention Studies (SOPINS), and visiting professor at the Centre for Social Development in Africa at the University of Johannesburg (South Africa).

Her research topics are citizenship, solidarity and justice which she applies to the domains of care, welfare and family. She is project leader with Dorota Lepianka) of a cross-national study on justice and fairness (ETHOS, Horizon2020), was PI in the cross-national study on solidarity (SOLIDUS 2015-2018, Horizon2020) en in the study on European citizenship (bEUcitizen 2014-2017, FP6). She was co-chair of the board of ESPAnet (2007-2014), one of the founders and researchers of the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study, member of the Executive committee of the FP6 Network of Excellence Reconciling Work and Welfare (RECWOWE), PI of the research programme Pathways to Work, and of the ORA research program 'New Social Risks' (PolChi). She participates actively in research projects in South Africa on cash and care for poor families and the evaluation of family interventions, projects that also involve master students. 

• ETHOS creates an interdisciplinary and integrative perspective on justice and fairness in Europe.
• SOLIDUS explores current and future expressions of European solidarity from an interdisciplinary approach
• bEUcitizen focuses on the barriers that still exist to realize and exercise citizenship rights of EU citizens.
• RECWOWE
• Pathways to Work
• Research Gate