Team
Ana Mar Fernández Pasarín
Director – Political science and public administrationEUGOV Research Group
Ana Mar Fernández Pasarín is Full Professor of Political Science and Public Administration. She is the Director of the EUGLOB Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence of the UAB and the Coordinator of the EUGOV Research Group funded the Catalan government (www.eugov.uab.cat). Between 2009-2015 and again since 2021, she has held the position of Vice-Dean for economic affairs of the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology. Between 2016 and 2018, she was also the Coordinator of the Political Science Unit of the UAB. She is currently the Principal Investigator of the EUDECON research project ‘Delegation and Consensual Decision-Making. The Role of the Commission in the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Facility’ (Ministry of Sciences and Innovation, 2023-2026). Ana Mar Fernández Pasarín holds three research assessments exercises CNEAI (last period awarded: 2015-2020). She was an associate researcher at Sciences Po Paris (Centre d’études européennes 2008-2011) and a visiting scholar at the ITAM (Mexico), University of Kunming (China), University of Bologna and University of Paris VIII. Her main research areas are European institutional dynamics and public policies, with specific reference to EU Decision-Making and Europeanisation dynamics. Along her research career, she has contributed to knowledge on the EU Presidential system, comitology procedures, EU policies (In particular consular and visa policy) and Europeanisation studies. This experience has been acknowledged by the European Commission through the awarding of two consecutive Jean Monnet Chairs (2018-2021 and 2022-2025).
Ana.Fernandez.Pasarin@uab.cat
Nuria Font Borras
Political science and public administrationEUGOV Research Group
Nuria Font (PhD, UAB) is an Associate Professor of political science at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She currently investigates EU decision-making, populism, democratic accountability and transparency in EU policy-making. She has published articles at the Journal of European Public Policy, Party Politics, Journal of Common Market Studies, Government & Opposition, International Review of Administrative Sciences, Administration & Society, Parliamentary Affairs, Environmental Politics, and Ecology & Society, among others. She has been a visiting researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Chicago, the University of California at San Diego, the University of California at Berkeley, and the European University Institute in Florence. She is the Principal Investigator of the project PEUTRANSP Legislative Transparency in the European Parliament and is willing to supervise PhD dissertations on EU-related topics.
Nuria.Font@uab.cat
Xavier Ballart Hernández
Political science and public administrationXavier Ballart is a professor of Public Administration and Public Policy and the Dean of the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. PhD in Political Science by UAB, he was a “La Caixa” scholarship holder, Master of Public Affairs by Indiana University, postdoc at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He has taught semester courses at Indiana University, College of Bruges, University of Montpellier, IBEI and, in shorter formats, in several higher education centers in Latin America. He has collaborated with the World Bank, the IADB-BID, the government of Catalonia and the Barcelona Provincial Council. Member of the IGOP, he was director of the Department of Political Science and Public Law, coordinator of the Master of Public Management (UAB-UB-UPF) in its beginnings, and first secretary-editor of the Spanish Journal of Political Science.
Xavier.Ballart@uab.cat
Ixchel Perez Duran
Political science and public administrationEUGOV Research Group
Ixchel Pérez-Durán is Associate Professor in Public Administration and Policy at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). Her research interests include governance, accountability, regulation, trust, transparency, European Union institutions. She obtained her PhD in Political and Social Sciences from Pompeu Fabra University in December 2013, with European Doctorate Mention. Prior to joining the UAB, she was a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral research fellow at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). She has also been a visiting researcher at the Utrecht University School of Governance, Leiden University, the University of Antwerp, the European University Institute, and the Copenhagen Business School. Her research has been published in various journals, including the Journal of European Public Policy, Regulation & Governance, West European Politics, JCMS: Journal of Common market Studies, the European Political Science Review, the Journal of European Integration, Comparative European Journal, Bulletin of Latin American Research, and the International Review of Administrative Sciences.
Ixchel.Perez@uab.cat
Irina Ciornei
Political science and public administrationTransdem Research Group
Irina Ciornei es investigadora Ramon y Cajal en el departamento de ciencia política de la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. Tiene un doctorado en ciencia política por la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. Su trabajo abarca los campos de la política de la Unión Europea, las políticas públicas y los estudios migratorios. El área de investigación principal de Irina se encuentra dentro del campo de la política y la formulación de políticas de la Unión Europea, donde estudia los efectos de las políticas distributivas y redistributivas europeas en los públicos de masas. Irina está coordinando un proyecto de investigación sobre el efecto de los fondos Next Generation EU en las opiniones políticas de los actores económicos. El proyecto se intitula “Business and politics. How NGEU funds shape EU support (EUBUSINESS)” financiado por el Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y universidades entre el 09/2024-08/2028.
Irina.Ciornei@uab.cat
Roberto Pannico
Political science and public administrationDEC Research Group
I am a Ramón y Cajal Fellow at the Department of Political Science at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and a member of the Democracy, Elections, and Citizenship (DEC) research group. Previously, I was a Beatriu de Pinós Fellow at the Universitat de Barcelona and a postdoctoral researcher for the ERC MAPLE Project at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais (ICS) of the Universidade de Lisboa. I completed a PhD in Political Science at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in 2017.
I conduct research on public opinion and political behaviour, with a primary, though not exclusive, focus on citizens’ attitudes toward the European Union. My research has been published in international journals such as the British Journal of Political Science, Journal of European Public Policy, European Union Politics, West European Politics, Party Politics, and Electoral Studies. I am the Principal Investigator (PI) of the project «Leading the Crowd: The Role of Radical Parties in Public Euroscepticism (EULEAD)», funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades of Spain.
Roberto.Pannico@uab.cat
Alina Vranceanu
Political science and public administrationDEC Research Group
Alina Vrânceanu is a Ramón y Cajal Fellow in the Department of Political Science at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Previously, she held positions as a María Zambrano Postdoctoral Fellow at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (2022-2024), as well as a Research Fellow (2020-2022) and Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow (2018-2020) – both at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. She earned her PhD in Political and Social Sciences from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in 2018. Her research focuses on questions of individual preference formation, political representation, and mass-elite linkages, with a particular emphasis on the immigration issue.
Alina.Vranceanu@uab.cat
Colleen Elizabeth Boland
Political science and public administrationEUGOV Research Group
IO: Dr. Colleen Boland is postdoctoral researcher at Radboud University’s Centre for Migration Law, where she is part of the coordinating team of (and researcher on) the EU Horizon project Global Strategy for Skills, Migration and Development. As part of the university’s Network on Migrant Inclusion (RUNOMI), she is also examining labor integration and digitalization in Europe from a gender and intersectional perspective, with a focus on platformization. Previously, at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), she assisted coordination on the EU Horizon2020 ITFLOWS (IT Tools and Methods for Managing Migration Flows) project, in addition to research duties relating to mixed migration flows to Europe since the start of the project. She also coordinated “Gendered crimmigration discourse and practices: Catalan case and multilevel governance potential,» funded by the Institut Català Internacional per la Pau, and engaged in the project, «Crimmigration in Europe: Compounded Dilution of Asylum-seekers’ and Women’s Human Rights,» as a 2021-2022 re:constitution fellow (funded by Stiftung Mercator). Earlier research addressed identity construction among youth of migrant origin, as well as aspirational outcomes and experiences of discrimination, among European Muslim youth.
Colleen.Boland@uab.cat
Héctor Sala Lorda
EconomicsHector Sala is a Full Professor at the Department of Applied Economics at UAB, specializing in macroeconomics, particularly labor markets, the Phillips Curve, labor income share, consumption, and fiscal policy. He holds a PhD in Economics from UAB (2000) and has been a Research Affiliate at the Institute of Labor Economics (Bonn, Germany) since 2004. He has been a visiting scholar at the University of Bergamo (2023), the University of New South Wales (2007-2008), and Birkbeck College, University of London (1999), where he earned an MSc in Economics (1997), as well as conducting research stays at institutions including the University of St Andrews, University College Dublin, Ryerson University, University of Kent, Brunel University, Cornell University, and the Institute for the Study of Labor. He has led several research projects and supervised nine PhD theses (with two ongoing). His work is indexed in Publons (Web of Science Researcher ID K-6370-2017), Scopus (ID 23100847600), and ORCID (ID 0000-0002-3043-2790). Actively engaged in knowledge transfer, he has collaborated with institutions such as PIMEC, Manpower, the Centre for Industrial Economics, the Institute of Autonomous Studies, Caixa Catalunya, and local public administrations. He is also the co-founder of the Centre for Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation Research (CREIS) at UAB and co-editor of the Annual Report on Entrepreneurship, Economy, and Social Innovation. From 2018 to 2021, he served as Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business at UAB.
Hector.Sala@uab.cat
Oriol Costa Fernández
International relationsObservatorio de Política Exterior Europea
Oriol Costa is Associate professor of International Relations at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and Senior Research Associate at Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). His research looks at the interaction between the European Union and the international order, with a special interest on how the latter shapes the ways in which the EU acts in the international arena. He has also done research on the contestation and politicization of EU foreign policy. He has been PI of the Project EUSOV and is now PI of the Project COURAGE and of the MSCA Doctoral Network EUFOG. He is a researcher of the Observatory of European Foreign Policy, a research group based at IBEI. He has co-edited three books (2012, 2016 and 2025) and three special issues/symposium sections in top journals (Journal of Common Market Studies, European Security and Politics and Governance), and has authored articles for Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of European Integration, European Security, Politics and Governance, Cambridge Review for International Affairs, Comparative European Politics, Politische Vierteljahresschrift, Mediterranean Politics, or South European Society and Politics and Cooperation and Politics. He is the Vice-dean for Academic Affairs at the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology of the UAB.
Oriol.Costa@uab.cat
Eduard Soler Lecha
International relationsObservatorio de Política Exterior Europea
Eduard Soler i Lecha is an Associate Professor of International Relations at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He holds a PhD in International Relations and a degree in Political Science. His main areas of expertise include geopolitics, foresight, foreign policy, Euro-Arab relations, and the Middle East and North Africa region. Among his most recent publications are the book EU Foreign Policy in a Fragmenting International Order (co-edited with Oriol Costa and Martijn Vlaskamp) and the article “Regionalism and Alliances in the Middle East, 2011-2021: From a ‘Flash in the Pan’ of Regional Cooperation to Liquid Alliances” in Geopolitics, co-authored with Raffaella del Sarto. Eduard has extensive experience in leading and participating in collaborative research and training projects, such as MENARA, an H2020 project on the geopolitics of the Middle East and North Africa led by CIDOB, which involved 14 partners and around 50 researchers; and El Hiwar (2013-2022), a Euro-Arab diplomacy training project implemented by the College of Europe (Bruges). In 2010, he worked as an advisor in the Mediterranean Unit of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, actively contributing to the preparation and implementation of Mediterranean initiatives during Spain’s rotating presidency of the EU Council. Alongside his teaching duties, he is a Senior Associate Researcher at CIDOB (Barcelona Centre for International Affairs), where he worked from 2005 to 2022. He is also a member of the Observatory of European Foreign Policy and serves on the international advisory boards of Mediterranean Politics, the IEMed Mediterranean Yearbook, and the Institut für Europäische Politik (IEP) in Berlin.
Eduard.Soler@uab.cat
Juan Pablo Soriano Gatica
International relationsObservatorio de Política Exterior Europea
Juan Pablo Soriano is an Assistant Professor (Professor Lector) in the Public International Law and International Relations unit of the Department of Public Law and Historical-Legal Sciences at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). His research interests include Euro-Latin American relations, the international relations of Latin American countries, international security (both traditional and non-traditional security issues), foreign policy analysis, and the intersection of emerging technologies and international relations. He holds a Ph.D. and a Master’s degree in Political Science from the UAB, a Master’s degree in International Security from the University of Hull, United KIngdom, and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
JuanPablo.Soriano@uab.cat
Diego Badell Sanchez
International relationsObservatorio de Política Exterior Europea
Diego Badell is Assistant Professor in International Relations and European Studies at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Spain. Prior to this role, he was Research Fellow at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). His research focuses on EU foreign policy and international norms, particularly multilateral institutions. He has published in Public Management Review, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, International Relations, Journal of Common Market Studies, European Security, and Global Affairs.
Diego.Badell@uab.cat
Cristina Blasi Casagrán
LawGlobal Intel Research Group
Dr Blasi is Associate Professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). She is a researcher and lecturer of EU Law and Public Participation in the EU institutions in the Law Faculty and Digital Law at the Engineering School. After she completed her Law Degree in 2007, she completed a Masters degree on EU integration (Barcelona, 2008), a LL.M. on EU Law (Saarland, 2009) and a LL.M on Comparative, European and International Laws (Florence, 2011). She completed her Ph.D. in Law at the European University Institute (Florence, 2015), in which she specialised on EU privacy and data protection law. As for her professional experience, she carried out paid internships at the Legal Service of the European Commission (2010), the European Supervisor of Data Protection (2012) and Europol (2013). Dr Blasi has more than 10 years of teaching experience to undergraduate and graduate students at several universities, as well as research experience on projects funded by the Spanish government and by the European Commission. She has coordinated several EU-funded projects such as ITFLOWS and EUCONAS.
Cristina.Blasi@uab.cat
Lidia Ballesta Martí
LawGlobal Intel Research Group
Dr. Lídia Ballesta Martí is a Lecturer in Law at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), with expertise in EU Law, gender equality, anti-discrimination, and digital law. She holds a PhD in Law and a Master’s in European Integration. In addition to her academic career, she has over a decade of experience as a lawyer and legal consultant.
Lidia.Ballesta@uab.cat
Merve Butorac
EUGOV Research GroupMerve Butorac (née Biten) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Management and Production Engineering (DIGEP) at Politecnico di Torino. She earned her PhD in Political Science from the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on the intersection of European governance, public opinion, and economic policies, with a particular emphasis on how austerity measures influence political trust in European Union (EU) institutions. She employs advanced quantitative methods, including multilevel modelling, combining survey data with macroeconomic indicators to explore the socio-political impacts of European economic governance. Within FusEurope, Dr. Butorac works on survey design and on the quantitative analysis of the survey results. For more information, you can see: Research Gate, Google Scholar, and LinkedIn
Merve.Butorac@polito.it
Assistant
Albert Batlle González
Albert Batlle holds an MA in European Integration Studies from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, where his thesis examined the future of EU Cohesion Policy in the aftermath of the Recovery and Resilience Facility. He also earned a BA in International Relations from the same university and is currently pursuing an MA in Economic History. His academic interests focus on the development of the European distributive policies and on militarist attitudes. He is currently assisting the EUGOV Research Group.
UAB CDE Support
External collaborations
Juan Antonio Cordero Fuertes
I am associate professor in Computer Science at École Polytechnique (Institut Polytechnique de Paris), France. Previously, I held a position of research assistant professor at École Polytechnique (2016-2020), postdoctoral researcher at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (HK SAR, PRC, 2015-2016), the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium, 2012-2015), and INRIA (France, 2012). I defended my PhD in Computer Science at École Polytechnique in 2011, about the optimization of link-state routing protocols for compound (wired/wireless) internetworks. My main research interests include routing protocols and information transfer in constrained internetworks and the Internet, mathematical modeling of information systems, and the study of stability, energy efficiency, and performance of distributed systems in dynamic networks. I am currently the PI of the DYNSYS project, on stability and performance of dynamic distributed information systems, funded by France’s Ministère des Armées.