Miranda Lubbers is Professor of Anthropology at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Spain, and an ICREA Acadèmia fellow of the Catalan Institute of Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA). Her research studies how social networks shape processes of social cohesion, polarization, and exclusion (particularly of migrants and people with low or no incomes). These are fundamentally relational processes, but they have often been investigated at the individual level only. She uses both quantitative and qualitative analysis. At the UAB, she founded and directs the COALESCE Lab (Laboratory for Computational Analysis of Egonetworks, Social Cohesion, and Exclusion), part of the GRAFO research group, which studies these social processes from a network perspective and unites the people working on related projects. She is currently directing the ERC Advanced Grant-funded project "A network science approach to social cohesion in European societies" (PATCHWORK; European Research Council), the Volkswagen Foundation project "Inclusivity norms to counter polarization in European societies" (INCLUSIVITY; in consortium with Maarten van Zalk -lead PI-, Eva Jaspers, Oliver Christ, and Marcin Bukowski), and a smaller project of the Spanish Ministry with Hugo Valenzuela, DIMCOM.
Prof. Lubbers received her PhD in Behavioral and Social Sciences from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. After being a postdoctoral research fellow at the Groningen Institute for Educational Research at the University of Groningen from 2004-2006, she was awarded a Rubicon fellowship by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, in 2008, the Beatriu de Pinos fellowship of the Catalan government, and in 2010 the prestigious Ramón y Cajal senior research fellowship of the Spanish Ministry of Education. She also received the 2010 Award of Excellence in Research from her university and in 2014 the Award for Outstanding Research Trajectory to the effects of the I3 Program of the Spanish Ministery of Science and Innovation. Her research has been published in journals such as International Migration Review, Social Networks, Human Nature, New Media and Society, the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, and the European Journal of Social Psychology.
Prof. Lubbers is associate editor of the journal Social Networks, editorial board member of Social Inclusion, and elected fellow of the European Academy of Sociology.
