The Spanish Ministry of Science will launch two postdoctoral fellowship calls in November 2025, one for recent Doctors (the "Juan de la Cierva" call) and one for people who already have some postdoctoral experience (the "Ramón y Cajal" call). Both Spanish and international candidates can apply. Applicants must be supported by a research group and department at a Spanish University. The COALESCE Lab is happy to support one candidate in each call. Please note that the procedure takes quite a long time, so this is of interest if you are looking for a postdoc opportunity starting in the fall of 2026.
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Juan de la Cierva Fellowship (you can find last year´s call here, we will update it when this year´s call opens)
- For recent PhD graduates (PhD awarded between January 1, 2024, and December 31, 2025)
- Duration: 2 years
- Application period: November 25 – December 17, 2025
- Applicants must not have completed their PhD at the host university (i.e., UAB in our case)
- Number of grants to be awarded: Approximately 500 (according to last year´s call)
- We recommend applying only if you have at least 2 well-indexed journal articles, given the competitive nature of the call.
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Ramón y Cajal Fellowship (you can find last year´s call here, we will update it when this year´s call opens)
- For researchers with postdoctoral experience (PhD awarded between January 1, 2015, and December 31, 2023)
- Duration: 5 years
- Application period: November 19 – December 11, 2025
- Applicants must have spent time working abroad (outside Spain)
- Number of grants to be awarded: Approximately 500 (according to last year´s call)
- We recommend applying only if you have at least 4 well-indexed journal articles (as author or coauthor) along with a strong international research trajectory. Many Ramón y Cajal fellows later transition into tenured positions at their host institutions.
COALESCE Lab (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) is happy to support one candidate for each call who would like to join us in Barcelona to work on topics such as social networks, social cohesion, social inclusion, migration, polarization, and social science methodology. This is a great opportunity to collaborate on the data collected for our ERC project, “A Network Science Approach to Social Cohesion in European Societies”, though we also welcome other research proposals aligned with our interests. Please note that departmental approval is required for each application, which we will apply for.
Interested?
If you’re considering applying or would like more information, please get in touch with us as early as possible to discuss your proposal and the support process (Miranda Lubbers, mirandajessica.lubbers@uab.cat). We can help you with the application procedure, which can be a bit daunting especially for foreigners. If you would like to know what the COALESCE Lab is like for early-career scholars, feel free to reach out to any of the PhD students and postdocs at the lab (see "Team").
