Our Faculty

Dr Işık Özel is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Carlos III University of Madrid. She received her PhD in Political Science at the University of Washington, Seattle. Broadly situated in comparative political economy, her research focuses on the politics of institutional change, its diverse determinants and outcomes mostly in middle-income countries and Southern Europe. Her work focuses on several policy areas, particularly entailing education and skill development, market regulation and social policy.

Dr Kevin Grecksch is a social scientist at the University of Oxford who specialises in normative and analytical aspects of governance, especially with regard to water and climate change adaptation. His research interests include (multilevel) environmental governance, water governance, climate change adaptation, governance of societal transformation process

Dr. Sebastián Lavezzolo is an Associate Professor of Political Science in the Dept. of Social Sciences at the UC3M. He holds a PhD in Political Science (New York University). His research focuses on the crisis of representative democracy, electoral behavior, relations between finance and politics. An expert in methods with a specialization in quantitative methodology, Dr. Lavezzolo teaches ‘Methods in Sustainability Studies’ in MASUS.

Professor Anxo Sánchez is a physicist and applied mathematician. His research deals mostly with the applications of the physics of complex systems to social and biological sciences; he has contributed to the advancement of different fields, from economics to condensed matter physics through ecology and theoretical computer science. His research has been funded by the European Commission, the Spanish government, the Madrid Regional Government, NATO, ESF, and the BBVA Foundation.

Anna Tarí researches the role of the consumer within a circular economy model. She is in the dissertation phase of a PhD in Business Administration (Boston University). She is the Founder and President of the Circular Economy Club (CEC), an international hub with over 5,000 members and 160 CEC local clubs that bring circularity to their cities worldwide. As a recognition of her role in bolstering the circular economy movement internationally, Anna received several awards, including the Ibero-American Leadership Award, and was a Finalist at the United Nations SDG Award, the United Nations World Champions of the Earth, and was highly commended by the World Economic Forum (WEF) Circulars Awards program.

Carlos Santiago Caballero earned his PhD in Economic History from London School of Economics and is Professor in the Social Sciences Department of the Carlos III University. His research interests are diverse although he particularly likes environmental history, the economic effects of past climate changes, consequences of income inequality, and historical demographics. He has published his research in “Economics & Human Biology”, “Journal of Interdisciplinary History” and “Cliometrica”. He is member of the Climate Strategic Initiative of the UC3M.

Originally from Montevideo, Dr Emiliano Travieso earned his PhD in Economic History from the University of Cambridge (King’s College) with a thesis on environment and development in Uruguay, which won the Alexander Gerschenkron Prize of the Economic History Association. His research centres on Latin American and comparative economic history, with a focus on the interactions between commercial agriculture and the natural environment. He is Assistant Professor at Carlos III University of Madrid where he teaches Environmental History and Economic History.

Amuitz Garmendia is an Associate Professor in Political Science in the Dept of Social Sciences at the UC3M. Dr. Garmendia got her PhD from Binghamton University and her research interests include federal political economy, political parties and individuals’ political behavior. She is the Academic Secretary of the Carlos III - Juan March Institute. Dr. Garmendia teaches ‘Globalization and International Order: Controversies and new trajectories’ in MASUS.

Specialized in comparative politics and conflict studies, Professor Sánchez-Cuenca works on terrorism, systemic crisis of representative democracy and the evolution of the Spanish democracy. Dr. Sánchez-Cuenca teaches a course entitled ‘Conflict, Violence and Development’ in MASUS.

Dr. Covadonga Meseguer is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Madrid. Specialized in comparative and international political economy, Dr. Meseguer is an expert on political economy of international migration. She has held teaching and research positions at London School of Economics, New York University, European University Institute, Florence, Barcelona Institute for International Studies, Nuffield College, Oxford, Central European University (Budapest), and the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics, Mexico City. Dr. Meseguer teaches Political Economy of Migration at MASUS.

Pedro Riera is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Dept. of Social Sciences at UC3M. He earned this PhD in Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute. Specialized in comparative politics, Prof. Riera’ research interests include voting behavior and institutional engineering. Dr Riera is the the Director of the Masters in Political and Electoral Analysis and the Director of the Postgraduate School of Economics and Political Science at UC3M. He teaches ‘Green Politics’ in MASUS.

A graduate from Harvard’s Kennedy School Masters in Public Administration, Gonzalo Fanjul is Policy Director at the Institute of Global Health of Barcelona (ISGlobal) and Co-founder of Fundación porCausa (Research, Journalism & Migration). He is the author and co-editor of El País award-winning blog 3.500 Millones. He has extensive experience in policy research and campaign strategy, having been a leading member of Oxfam International's campaign and research teams.

Professor José Escribano Ubeda-Portugués is Associate Professor of Public International Law at UC3M. He holds a PhD in Public International Law from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a PhD in European Studies (Political Science) from the Ortega y Gasset Institute of Research (UCM), as well as three LLM degrees. He has published widely on climate change law, on the history of international relations, and on instruments and regimes for international cooperation.

Dr. Elena Díaz is Associate Professor of Public International Law and International Relations and Coordinator of the International Relations degree at the Rey Juan Carlos University of Madrid. She holds a PhD in International Law. Her research focuses on the sustainable development, international organizations and institutions, human rights and international peace and security. She has been a visiting researcher at the University of Reno (United States), Havana University (Faculty of Law) -as a result of a Santander research grant -, at the Peace Palace (The Hague), University of Paris X Nanterre-La Défense (France) and University of Cagliari (Italy).

Dr Francesca Lipari is an economist at the Department of Mathematics of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. She works on behavioural and experimental economics, investigating how preferences and social norms determine what choices people make. Dr Lipari has taught Labour and Gender Economics, Economics of Innovation and Sustainability, and Calculus and Microeconomics at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.

Daniel Pérez del Prado is an associate professor at Carlos III University of Madrid, specialising in Social Law and Labour Economics. He is also a member of the University's research group on Economic Changes, Labour law and New Society. He is author of four books and more than one hundred articles, and has been a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge, the Université Libre de Bruxelles, and the University of Leuven (KU Leuven), among others. He has acted as an expert for the European Commission, the European Parliament, and Eurofound.

Dr Dulce Manzano is a permanent Research Fellow at the Institute of Public Goods and Policies of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) since 2021. She was a professor in the Department of Applied Sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) from 2009 to 2021. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the Autonomous University of Madrid and was a postdoctoral researcher at the Juan March Institute. She has been a visiting scholar at Nuffield College (University of Oxford), New York University, and the Center for European Studies (SciencesPo Paris). Her research focuses on the political economy of education and educational inequality, the use of ICTs, and citizen preferences for redistribution.

Déborah Itriago is an international consultant for the Pan American Health Organization in the Unit of Equity, Gender, Human Rights and Cultural Diversity. She holds a Master's Degree from the Universidad Carlos III (Madrid, Spain) in Economic Development, a Specialization Diploma in Cooperation for Sustainable Development and an Advanced Postgraduate Diploma in Governance and Political Management. She has specialized in the analysis of social and political inequities in the health sector, labor markets, and tax policy in Latin America and Caribbean countries.

Pablo Martinelli Lasheras is Associate Professor of Economic History at the Department of Social Sciences of UC3M. Born in Barcelona, he received his PhD from the European University Institute of Florence. His research focuses on historical economics and development. He is particularly interested in the process of economic development and its relationship with agrarian institutions, several forms of inequality and market failures, and the interplay between the environment, economics, and politics. Pablo Martinelli Lasheras teaches Topics in Development in MASUS.

Born in Tucumán in northern Argentina, Dr Esteban Nicolini received his PhD in Economics from Pompeu Fabra University. His research has examined economic growth and convergence between Argentina’s provinces, long-term inequality in Spain, and pre-industrial incomes and demographic dynamics in England. He has taught Development Economics and Economic History in several universities both in Spain and in Latin America, where he has also worked as a consultant for the public sector. He is Associate Professor of Economic History at Carlos III University of Madrid.

Ricardo Mora is Associate Professor of Economics at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Dr Mora develops and applies empirical methods in topics mostly related to Labour Economics. In addition to his contributions to the study of labor markets, he has lately published research on segregation, the measurement of quality of care in hospitals, agricultural productivity, and wage differentials. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the London School of Economics, UK.

Professor Juan Carmona is a leading historian of agriculture and the rural world. He is professor of economic history at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and has published widely on rural institutions, organizations, and conflicts. His most recent book is Why Democracy Failed: The Agrarian Origins of the Spanish Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2020, co-authored with James Simpson)

Dr Martin Godefroid is an agronomist with a PhD in ecological and agricultural sciences from Montpellier SUPAGRO (France). His research aims to explore the eco-evolutionary processes that shape the spatio-temporal patterns of biological communities in ecosystems and agrosystems. His long-standing goal is to understand the response of species to biotic and abiotic changes, landscape composition and human disturbances, which is a crucial prerequisite for the design of environmentally friendly and cost-effective resource management, biodiversity conservation and pest control strategies.

Dr Fernando Valladares is a biologist at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). His research on biodiversity and the impacts of climate change on ecosystems has been widely cited in scientific journals. In 2021 he was awarded the Jaume I Prize for the Defense of the Environment and the Environmental Communication Award by the BBVA Foundation. As a scientific communicator, Dr Valladares appears regularly in Spanish and international media to raise awareness about our current environmental crises.

Dr Alberto Antonioni is Juan de la Cierva Research Fellow at the Department of Mathematics at the Carlos III University of Madrid and previously he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems (2015-2017) at University College London (2017-2018). ​He earned his PhD in Information Systems from University of Lausanne and a PhD in Mathematical Engineering from Carlos III University of Madrid (joint supervision, 2015). Dr Antonioni has published the results of his research in Regional Environmental Change, Journal of Physics: Complexity and Nature Communications among other journals.

Dr. Pablo del Río is the Head of the Environmental Economics Group (GEA) and senior (tenured) researcher at the Institute for Public Goods and Policies at the National Research Council of Spain (CSIC). He holds a PhD in Environmental Economics (Autonomous University of Madrid). His research is situated at the crossroads of Energy Economics, Environmental Economics and Innovation Economics. More specifically, he undertakes economic analysis of policies for the support of renewable energy and on the drivers to eco-innovation in the energy, industry and the transport sectors. Dr. del Río teaches the course ‘Climate Change, Energy and Global Governance’ in MASUS.

Álvaro Enríquez de Salamanca is Forest Engineer and Doctor in Environmental Sciences (UNED, Spain) and Associate Professor in the Department of Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolution at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He has published theoretical and applied research in journals like Environmental Impact Assessment Review, Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management, Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal and Science of The Total Environment among others. Dr Enríquez de Salamanca is also partner and director of “DRABA Ingeniería y Consultoría Medioambiental”, a firm created in 1995 to provide services of environmental evaluation, mitigation and adaptation to climate change.

Xiomara Cantera holds a degree in information sciences, in the field of journalism. She works as a press officer at the National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN-CSIC) since December 2013 where, among other responsabilities, she puts journalists and scientist in contact with each other. She writes articles for different magazines and websites and is a co-author with Fernando Valladares and Adrián Escudero of the book What do we know about Planetary Health (Ed. CSIC-Catarata). She directs the digital magazine NaturalMente and has cordinated educational activities such as Tell me How to Dedicate Myself to Science and participated in the creation and production of the documentary Evolución. 250 years of the National Museum of Natural Sciences. She started her work as a scientific journalist in 2007, working at the Spanish Research Council’s (CSIC) press department.

Floridea Di Ciommo holds a PhD in Transport and Urban Planning from ENPC-ParisTech and a masters in Economics and Statistics from Bocconi University. She is co-director of cambiaMO|changing mobility, where she leads research, innovation and development in the areas of transport and equality, inclusive technologies, and sustainable logistics. She has extensive academic and professional experience in modelling transport demand and has taught in several European universities (ENPC-ParisTech, Français d’Urbanisme, UPM, UPC-Barcelona Tech, University College of London). At MASUS she teaches Urban Sustainability.