Academic Information

Degree in Political Science and Sociology (Sociology Section) Faculty of Political Science and Sociology of the University of Granada 1997

Specialist in Applied Social Research and Data Analysis Sociological Research Center 1999

European Doctor in Political Science and Sociology Faculty of Political Science and Sociology of the National University of Distance Education 2006

Academic positions held

Professor Doctor in the area of Sociology since 2010

Research activity

My research career began in 2000 with the Study Group on Social Trends (GETS) of the UNED, around the problem of exclusion and social inequalities. It was based on a socio-historical perspective learned from scholars such as G. Therborn and J.F. Tezanos. It was focused on the investigation of structural and cultural trends of state societies. Until 2010 I participated in more than 20 research projects and contracts. Of these, three were competitive R&D projects. And, the rest, contracts with private and public entities (Ramón Areces Foundation, FUNCAS, FOESSA, ONCE and INJUVE). I wrote in more than 15 research publications and more than 15 contributions to international and national Congresses.
En ese tiempo, mi trabajo se centró en la investigación de las formas de identificación social en las sociedades contemporáneas en un contexto de “crisis expresiva” que J.F. Tezanos había comprendido o descubierto ya en el año 2001. Llegué hasta el año 2009. Entonces, me introduje en la diversidad de formas de gestión de las identidades sociales que se producía en las Comunidades Autónomas. Y, sospeché que el nivel “nacional”, la metodología cuantitativa, y el concepto “clase social” no era una buena base para estudiar las formas de identificación.
In 2010, I focused the study of social identification on cities. I was still looking to understand the connection between position and social identification, but I wanted to study it at micro levels. With the support of GETS, I was IP of the CSO2011-32121 project that lasted until 2015. In that project, I discovered the importance of the local in the formation of social identities, the internal division of the city and the formation of local barriers that isolate, stigmatize and marginalize. By kicking the city, I discovered the individual as a subject positioned within the structural and cultural boundaries in which he lives. And I had doubts about: the limits of the "city" and the "neighborhood", the way in which territorial stigmas are constructed, the strategies that are developed to overcome them and the social agents that influence the action. I came face to face with the "social experience" that modulates the relationship between position and identifying practice. The project, as planned, was a failure. It started from purely structuralist erroneous premises that tried to shrink the individual subject with tools such as an almost closed questionnaire to know about the form of social identification of the subject. Even so, the fieldwork served to break all these epistemological prejudices and transform the research towards a new constructivist structural proposal that found in P. Bourdieu the right concepts to evolve and that I had met at the University of Sheffield, together with R. Jenkins, in 2005.
From the theory of fields, a vision has emerged where the individual appears as a polyhedron in a multidimensional environment, more as a matrix than as a point in space, and social experience gains strength in the face of the transitory position in the formation of practices. With those wickers, I entered another practice: crime. He appeared before me as I looked at urban inequalities. And I found the islands of exclusion that in the 90s M. Castells named. Then, L. Wacquant and his Regime of Advanced Urban Marginality came to me. Also, I found the work of many researchers in urbanism and sociology to locate vulnerable neighborhoods in Spain. And, I understood the connection between one and the other thanks to J. Alguacil and J. Camacho, as well as A. Hernandez Aja. And, after reviewing his work and that of many other colleagues, as well as the initiatives that have been developed to reverse the social situation of many of these spaces of exclusion in Europe and in Spain, I have come to propose this project with the idea of, not only improve our knowledge about the most vulnerable neighborhoods,  but also, to improve the forms of diagnosis and socio-urban intervention in these areas where a large part of the most disadvantaged population of our cities live and with which we must count for the integration of these areas.
The lines of research that I maintain are: stratification in large cities, urban exclusion, the process of individualization, the management of basic social identities, the explanation of crime as habitus and the control of urban violence.

Educational management experience

Since 2019 I am the vice-dean of academic planning and new degrees, and, first vice-dean of the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology.
Previously I acted as Coordinator of Face-to-Face Exams of the UNED, linked to the General Secretariat of the University for two years. Previously, I was secretary of the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology for four years under the tenure of two deans. And, even before, I was assistant secretary of the same faculty for another two years, back in 2006.