Academic background

PhD in Social Work from the University of Huelva, and BA in Psychology (Clinical specialization) from UNED.

Academic positions held

She is Professor of Social Work and Social Services in the Department of Social Work, Faculty of Law, at UNED.

She served as Director of the Department of Social Work at UNED for two consecutive terms, from June 2019 to November 2025, and was elected unanimously for her second term.

Previously, she directed the Gregorio Marañón Associated Centre of UNED in Madrid from 2012 to 2014, a major academic centre within UNED Madrid devoted to distance higher education and in-person academic support, serving more than 7,000 students through a broad network of tutorial, academic, library, and administrative services.

She is the founder and Co-Director next to Marit Sikivenes (University of Bergen) of the European Center for Research and Action for Minors and Migration (CEIPAMM), based at UNED.
 

Research Activity

Her research focuses on child, adolescent, youth, and family welfare systems; migration as a cross-cutting dimension of protection and intervention systems; decision-making processes; public policy analysis; and social work with groups.

She is Lead Editor of The Oxford Handbook on Migrant Children: Risk and Responses next to Neil Gilbert (UC Berkeley), Lorenzo Gil Sanz (UNED), and Inés Martínez Herrero (UNED), under contract with Oxford University Press and currently in preparation (expected publication by December 2027). She has authored or edited 11 books and more than 40 book chapters with publishers including Oxford University Press, Peter Lang, Thomson Reuters Aranzadi, Springer, Colex, Trotta, Sistema, Universitas, and Nau Llibres.

She has been a visiting researcher at the University of Maryland and The Open University, and in 2025 she completed a six-month research stay at the School of Social Welfare of the University of California, Berkeley.

Since 2015, she has been an affiliated researcher at the Centre for Research on Discretion and Paternalism at the University of Bergen. Between 2017 and 2022, she served as the Spanish representative in the DISCRETION project, funded through a European Research Council Consolidator Grant led by Marit Skivenes at the University of Bergen.

She has participated as principal investigator and as a member of research teams in projects funded by national and international bodies such as the European Research Council, UNED, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, and several public agencies and foundations.

Her articles have been published in journals such as Children and Youth Services Review, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, International Journal of Social Welfare, Technological Forecasting & Social Change, Sustainability, REIS, Arbor, Revista Internacional de Sociología, Cuadernos de Trabajo Social, and Sistema.

Her research activity has been recognized with two officially awarded six-year research periods (sexenios), and she submitted the application for a third in 2025. She was part of the team awarded the 20th Prize of the Spanish Economic and Social Council for a project on inequality, poverty, and social exclusion in Spain, and she has led a UNED research project evaluated as “excellent” by ANEP

Professional experience

She is Principal Investigator of the UNED research group linked to CEIPAMM.

CEIPAMM is an interdisciplinary academic centre devoted to advancing scientific knowledge, intervention practices, and public policies affecting accompanied and unaccompanied migrant minors.
Educational Management Experience

She has taught continuously in the UNED Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work since 2010, in core subjects such as Social Work with Groups, Social Work with Families, Diagnostic, Intervention and Evaluation Techniques, Third Sector and Social Intervention, Social Work and Disability, as well as supervising undergraduate final projects.

She has also taught in the Master’s Degree in Social Work, Welfare State and Methodologies of Social Intervention, in subjects such as Methods and Techniques of Social Intervention, Relational Processes, Empowerment and Social Intervention, and Master’s Final Projects. She has also contributed to doctoral training through seminars taught at the Doctoral School of Social Welfare (UC Berkekey) and  the Complutense University of Madrid.

Educational Management experience

Member of the International Network for Social Policy, Teaching and Research https://cipe.umd.edu/insp/
She has taught continuously in the UNED Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work since 2010 and coordinated core subjects in the field, including Models of Social Work with Groups, Techniques for Assessment, Intervention and Evaluation, Social Work with Families, Third Sector and Social Intervention, Social Work and Persons with Disabilities, Foundations of Social Work with Groups, and the Bachelor’s Final Project.