I am an Associate Professor at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Spain, and an ICREA Acadèmia fellow. My 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. At the UAB, I founded and direct the COALESCE Lab (Laboratory for Computational Analysis of Egonetworks, Social Cohesion, and Exclusion) that studies these social processes from a network perspective, and unites the people working on related projects. I am 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), the La Caixa project BRIDGES, and a project of the Spanish Ministry with Hugo Valenzuela, DIMCOM.
I received my 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, I 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. I also received the 2010 Award of Excellence in Research from my university and in 2014 the Award for Outstanding Research Trajectory to the effects of the I3 Program of the Ministery of Science and Innovation. My research has been published in journals such as International Migration Review, Social Networks, Human Nature, the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, the Journal of Research on Adolescence, the Journal of School Psychology, and the European Journal of Social Psychology. I proudly serve on the editorial boards of Social Networks and Social Inclusion and on the Board of Directors of the International Network for Social Network Analysis.