Roger Fernandez-Urbano

Roger Fernandez-Urbano holds a PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy, where he was awarded the prestigious Salvador de Madariaga Doctoral Fellowship by the Government of Spain. His research focuses on the intersections between subjective well-being, social inequalities, and social policy. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, he combines quantitative and qualitative methods.

After completing an MSc in Economics and Public Policy at the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics (2013) and an MA in Social Policy at the University of Warwick (2016), he began his PhD at the EUI in 2016, where he also obtained a Master of Research (MRes). He previously earned a Bachelor’s degree in Economics (University of Barcelona, 2011).

Roger has worked as a researcher at the University of Oxford (2015), and University of Barcelona (2011–12); with research stays at the Centre for Welfare State Research- University of Southern Denmark (2015), University of Pennsylvania (2019), LSE's European Institute (2019), and University of Pavia (2025).

He is currently a Ramón y Cajal Research Fellow (tenure-track) at the University of Barcelona, Department of Sociology. He also serves as Associate Editor of the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life and as Vice President of the Executive Committee of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS).

Previously, he was a Researcher at the Centre for Demographic Studies (2025); a Visiting Researcher at the Wellbeing Observatory of the Paris School of Economics (2024); and a Sociology Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Luxembourg (2021-2023), where he also taught PhD-level courses and collaborated closely with the Luxembourg Government. His work has been published in leading social science journals, and has collaborated with international organizations such as the United Nations (World Happiness Report) and the OECD (Wellbeing Data Hub).

In recognition of his academic trajectory, Roger has recently been awarded the prestigious Ramón y Cajal fellowship — one of the most competitive research grants in Spain — granted exclusively on the basis of scientific excellence and reserved for researchers ranking among the top candidates nationally in the Social Sciences.