University of A Coruña

University of A Coruña is the Spanish academic partner. The research team consists of members from the International Migration Sociology Team (ESOMI), based at the Faculty of Sociology, and from the Economic Development and Social Sustainability (EDaSS) department, based in the Faculty of Business at the University of A Coruña.

_______________________________________________________

Laura Oso is a Senior Lecturer (Profesora Titular de Universidad) at the Faculty of Sociology of the University of A Coruña where she held the post of Vice-Dean from 2009 to 2013. In 2016 she received the accreditation to Cátedra (Full Proffessor) from the Spanish Evaluation Agency (ANECA). Since 2011 she is the coordinator of ESOMI (The International Migration Sociology Team). Laura Oso is the current member of the Executive Committee at the International Sociological Association (ISA) and Vice-president for International Activities at the Spanish Sociological Association (FES). She has been an associate member of the COST Action ProsPol-Comparing European Prostitution Policies: Understanding Scales and Cultures of Governance (ProsPol) and of the network CIMORE (Circulations, Mobilités et espace Relationnel des migrants en Méditerranée). Her research work has centered mainly on the study of gender and migration. She has published extensively in journals (e. g. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies), co-editing Special Issues (e. g. Identities, Global Studies in Culture and Power, Papers, Sociological Research Online, Revista Española de Sociología) and books (e. g. The International Handbook on Gender, Migration and Transnationalism: Global and Development Perspectives, Edward Elgar Publishing). She is the Co-Editor of the book series on Southern European Societies (Edward Elgar). Email: laura.oso@udc.es.

Obdulia Taboadela Álvarez is PhD in Sociology, University Complutense of Madrid. She is an expert in labor markets, employment and International Migrations. Since 1993 she is associate professor of Sociology at University of A Coruña. She has been fellowship in different universities abroad. She is member of the research team ESOMI. She has published articles in Spanish and foreign journals. Moreover, she has developed more than twenty research projects in sociology, studying Europe social transformations. Specifically, she was the coleader of the Erasmus Impact Study (EC)  She has been the coordinator of an International Master Degree in Migrations (2011-2014) and Vicedean of International Affairs (2017-2018). She has held various positions of responsibility in the political sphere. She has been  Senator at XIII Legislature. In January 2020, she has been appointed Principal in Galicia of Menéndez y Pelayo International University. Email: obdulia.taboadela@udc.es.   

Belén Fernández Suárez is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of A Coruña, Spain. She is member of the Research Team in Sociology of International Migrations (ESOMI). She holds a PhD degree in Sociology from the University of A Coruña. She defended her PhD at University of A Coruña at the end of 2015 on the analysis of the institutionalization of immigrants integration policies at the regional level in Spain. She obtained a qualification of excellent with a cum laude mention and was awarded with the Extraordinary Prize to the Best Doctoral Thesis by the University of A Coruña. Her main lines of research are migration policies, local integration policies, and comparative policies of immigration. She did research stays at the University of California-San Diego, University of Lisbon, University of Sheffield (UK), University of Poitiers (France) and University of California-Berkeley. She took park in a huge number of research projects that can be consulted in her profile at the University of A Coruña. Email: belen.fernandez.suarez@udc.es.

Paula Alonso holds a BA degree in Sociology from the University of A Coruña (UDC). She has specialized in international migration completing the Official Master’s Degree in International Migration at University of A Coruña. She is currently on a contract as a management and research assistant in the ESOMI and she is also lecturer at the Faculty of Education of the University of Vigo. At this moment, she is writing her doctoral thesis on ‘The Distinguishing Use of Educational and Social Times Among Migrant Teenagers – Incidence of this Use on Family, School and Community Socialization Processes’”, and Laura Oso Casas (UDC). Her research lines are focused on the use of educational and social times among migrant teenagers, educational strategies among migrant families, socialization processes in migrant minors and educational policies. In her research career, she has been formed in international centers in Ireland, Mexico, Brasil or Argentina. Email: p.alonso@udc.es.

Diego López de Lera is Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Sociology of the University of Coruña. His main research lines are focused on the dynamics of population growth (demography); analysis of international migration flows, particularly between America and Europe, and the study of the situation of the foreign population in host countries. In recent years he has carried out researches and publications on these topics, specifically on the New Emigration from Spain; the return of immigrants from Spain and the Incidence of foreign immigration in the demographic dynamics of the territorial regions. He has participated in 13 research projects and is currently participating in one on “The new emigration from Spain: profiles, mobility strategies and transnational political activism” and another on “Gender, cross-mobility and transnational dynamics”, funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, Spain. Email: lopezl@udc.es.

Leticia Santaballa is a PhD researcher in the Welcoming Spaces project. With a BA in Psychology (University of Santiago de Compostela and University of South Wales), she oriented her career towards Local Development and Migration Studies, completing a M.A. in International Cooperation, with a Major in management of integrated local development (University of Valencia) and a M.A in Social Policies and community intervention, with a major in Migrations (University of A Coruña). During her Master thesis, she carried out a self-funded research about local experiences and multi-level practices of integration for asylum seekers and refugees around the Spanish Peninsula, focused on the relationship created with civil society. Alternating academic studies with field work in migrations, she counts with broad working experience in Spain, Greece and France, as a social intervention technician in reception and inclusion of migrant population, youth migrant integration in economically deprived rural and urban areas, local participation and partial management of refugee camps.
Email: leticia.santaballa@udc.es

Isabel Novo-Corti is Associate Professor of Economic Analysis at the Universidade da Coruña and Tutor at the Associate Centre of A Coruña at the Spanish National Open University (UNED), PhD in Economics. She is the coordinator of the EDaSS research group on Economic Development and Social Sustainability and member of the SET-LASE research group on socioeconomics at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She is a member of the University Institute of Maritime Studies; research fellow at the International Economic Institute (University Jaume I – Spain); member of the Economic Forum of Galicia (Spain), among other memberships. She is the director of the Atlantic Review of Economics and member of the editorial board of journals indexed in JCR. Her research focuses on economics, labour market and social sustainability, more general public policies and sustainability in the framework of Knowledge Society. Email: Isabel.novo.corti@udc.es.

Keina Espiñeira is Research Associate at the Department of Sociology and Communication Sciences at the University of A Coruña, working on the H2020 project: Welcoming Spaces. She is part of the team working on WP5, the role of local citizen-migrant engagements in realising welcoming spaces. It has the main goal to unravel people’s agency and interpersonal and intergroup relations as an explanatory factor for the conformation and survival of welcoming initiatives and the revitalisation of shrinking regions. Keina received her PhD in Political science from Universidad Complutense de Madrid (2016), and she holds a M.A in Experimental Documentary Cinema (Universidad de Alcalá, 2014). Her research focuses on the EU border-migration-asylum policies and technologies. She is interested in examining the contemporary transformations of borders into processes of socio-spatial ordering. Her empirical work is based in the Western Mediterranean, having extensive field work experience in Spain and Morocco. Email: keina.espineira@udc.es.

Mónica Ferrín Pereira is a Intalent and Ramón y Cajal researcher at the Faculty of Sociology, University of A Coruña. She received her PhD in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute (EUI) in Italy. Before moving to A Coruña, she worked at Collegio Carlo Alberto in Turin, and at the University of Zürich. Her research focuses on citizens’ democratic attitudes and gender inequality in public involvement. She is the sponsor of the European Social Survey Round 6 module on ‘Europeans’ understandings and evaluations of democracy’, which will be fielded again in 2021. She is also interested in understanding the gender gap in public participation, with a strong focus on stereotyping. Her research has appeared in the European Journal of Political Research, West European Politics, or the International Journal of Press/Politics.

Carlos Diz is a lecturer at the Department of Sociology and Communication Sciences at the University of A Coruña (UDC). He holds a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology, with a cum laude qualification and an extraordinary award from the UDC (2017). He is part of the Societies in Motion Research Team (ESOMI) and his research is characterised by the development of ethnographic fieldwork with an interdisciplinary sensibility. His work has mainly been conduced in the domain of social movements, urban studies and the anthropology of the body. His most recent work focuses on the intersectional analysis of collective action and mutual support groups, precarity, mobilities and migration studies.

Antía Pérez-Caramés is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Communication Sciences at the University of A Coruña. She is a member of the Societies in Movement Research Team (ESOMI) and of the Centre for Gender and Feminist Studies (CEXEF) at the University of A Coruña. She is also a member of the Galician Emigration Archive, a documentation centre on the phenomenon of migration in Galicia, and of the Inter-University Research Centre on Atlantic Cultural Landscapes (CISPAC). Her lines of research revolve around international migration, demographic ageing, and the analysis of gender relations and care. She is currently directing the R+D+i project “Crisis, migratory dynamics and living conditions of the migrant population in Spain. Comparative analysis of the effects of the Great Recession and the Pandemic” (Ministry of Science and Innovation) and the research project on development cooperation “Cape Verdean families in Galicia. Impact on development of the transnationalisation of care and remittances” (Xunta de Galicia).

Carlos Lubián holds a PhD in Sociology with a specialization in Migration Studies from the University of Jaén. He received the “Enrique Fuentes Quintana Doctoral Thesis Award” in 2022 for the thesis entitled “School segregation and family strategies on school choice: the migrant population in Granada”. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Jaén and a visiting researcher in the ESOMI research team (University of A Coruña). His lines of research focus on migration studies linked to educational inequalities, specifically in the field of school segregation, school choice and the study of educational and work paths. In this context, he has carried out research stays at the University of Santiago (Chile) and Indiana University (USA). Email: carlos.lubian@col.udc.es  

Mateo Núñez-Martínez is a PhD researcher at the ESOMI research team (University of A Coruña). He received a degree in sociology from the University of A Coruña and completed his Master Studies in History and Sociocultural Analysis from the University of Oviedo. His final degree project about future expectations and socioeconomic opportunities on El Bierzo’s coal mining area was recognised with honours, while his master thesis made use of a historiographic approach to describe the issue of labour conflict in the aforementioned territory. Currently working on his doctoral thesis about a comparative case study between Spain, Italy, and The Netherlands regarding the relation between migration and local development projects, the focus of his research is on rural areas under shrinkage, local development and public policies, immigration and emigration trajectories, or industrial reconversion, having specialised on qualitative approaches. He also shows interest on social and cultural anthropology, as well as on the instrumentalisation of sports and media when tackling migration affairs. Email: m.nunez1@udc.es