Sonja Blum is Researcher and Lecturer at the Institute of Political Science at the FernUniversität in Hagen (Germany). She is also Visiting Assistant Professor at the KU Leuven Public Governance Institute (Belgium). Sonja Blum holds a doctoral degree from the University of Münster (Germany), awarded in 2011 for her thesis on family policy reform processes in Germany and Austria. Her main research interests lie in the fields of public policy analysis, comparative social policy, family policy, policy ideas and knowledge utilisation. Together with Marleen Brans and Valérie Pattyn, she is co-chair of the Permanent Study Group on Policy Design and Evaluation within the EGPA (European Group for Public Administration). She is also co-coordinator of the “International Network on Leave Policies & Related Research” (LP&R), and editorial board member of European Policy Analysis. In her on-going research, she focuses on research utilisation in the policy process.