Margarita León, new director of the Institute of Government and Public Policies
Margarita León, professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Law at the UAB, has been appointed director of the Institute of Government and Public Policy (IGOP). She succeeds Professor Ismael Blanco from the same department.
Professor León's appointment took place at the IGOP Council meeting on 4 July. The new director expressed her desire to lead the Institute by working closely with the people who make up the organisation and adopting a horizontal approach, sharing decisions with the entire team.
Margarita León holds a PhD from the London School of Economics (2000). Before joining the UAB, where she is a professor of political science, she was a lecturer in European social policy at the University of Kent (2004-2010). She was a Marie Curie postdoctoral researcher at the European University Institute in Florence (2001-2003) and a Ramón y Cajal researcher at the IGOP (2010-2015). She was also visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley (2018), on a Fulbright scholarship and at the University of Oxford (2025). Her main areas of research are comparative social policy and welfare state reform. Professor León has published in numerous international books and scientific journals. Her most recent popular science book is El arte de pactar. Estado de bienestar, desigualdad y acuerdo social (Los libros de la Catarata, 2023). In 2018, she was awarded the ICREA Acadèmia prize for excellence in research.
The IGOP, a UAB research centre, aims to promote research, training, and social transfer in the field of government and public policy from an interdisciplinary perspective and, above all, with the ability to combine academic excellence with an impact on social reality.