Zenia Hellgren (UPF)

Doctor of Sociology (Stockholm University, 2012)

Senior Researcher and Lecturer at the Department of Political and Social Sciences and Barcelona School of Management, UPF, and Senior Researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU Social Research)

Member of the research groups GRITIM-UPF and GRETA

Member of the Barcelona City Council's Commission for Antiracism

Accredited Associate Professor (AQU)

New publications

Zenia Hellgren, 2024. Struggle, Exit, “Resilience”—or How Precarious Workers Cope with Late Neoliberalism. Individual and Collective Agency of Female Migrant Domestic Workers in Spain, International Political Sociology, Volume 18, Issue 3, Pages 1–19.

Zenia Hellgren & Lorenzo Gabrielli, 2024. “Tenemos el alma cauterizada”. Una etnografía del antigitanismo cotidiano y sus consecuencias. Barcelona: Icaria. ISBN: 978-84-19778-83-3

Coming book: Hellgren, Zenia, Alexander G. Page & Thomas Sealy, eds. (2025, forthcoming). Narratives and Practices of Migrant and Minority Incorporation in European Societies: Contested Diversity and Fractured Belongings. Routledge.

Most read article: Racialization and Aporophobia: Intersecting Discriminations in the Experiences of Non-Western Migrants and Spanish Roma (2021, w. Lorenzo Gabrielli), + 5,400 reads

Presentation

My research mainly addresses the intersections between inequalities and diversity in European societies. In this framework, I empirically investigate issues such as the policies and practices of integration and diversity management; discrimination and social boundaries; racism and anti-racism in education; job conditions and coping strategies of female migrant domestic workers; and access to social membership among undocumented migrants.

I am a sociologist with an interdisciplinary and intersectional approach, combining perspectives from, primarily, sociology, social anthropology, and political theory. My work aims to be transformative both at the academic and societal levels, and I often collaborate with policy-makers and organized civil society to extend the impact of my work beyond academia. I have designed and led numerous international research projects. Currently, I am the Principal Investigator of REACT: Research-Action against Antigypsyism and Anti-Muslim Discrimination: An Intersectional Approach to Deconstruct Institutional Racism in Schools, funded by the EU’s CERV (Citizens, Equality, Rights & Values) program. I am also senior researcher of INTERACT: Improving Integration and Active Citizenship for Low-Literate Adult Refugees, funded by the Norwegian Research Council, and GITMIX: Dynamics of Mixedness among Roma Populations in Catalonia, Spain: Interethnic Relations, Acculturation and Processes of Social Inclusion and Exclusion, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.

I specialize in qualitative research methods, guided by an inductive and ethnographic methodology. In recent years I have applied a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach in several projects. In REACT, I am further developing a transformative action approach to research, enhancing the link between academic, societal, and policy-relevant impact.