Time, energy, and sustainability: Raúl Velasco at Time Use Week 2026
ICTA-UAB researcher Raúl Velasco Fernández participated as a speaker at the thirteenth edition of Time Use Week, the international benchmark event for time policies. The conference took place from 19 to 21 October in Barcelona under the framework The Right to Time and Social Acceleration.
This year's edition focused primarily on the impact of social acceleration, a growing phenomenon characterised by the exponential increase in the speed of technological, cultural and everyday processes. Driven by advancements in digitalisation and artificial intelligence, this acceleration generates widespread time poverty, as well as anxiety, overload and reduced well-being by hindering the balance between paid work, care, rest and community life.
Within Panel 1 of the main programme, moderated by Ariadna Güell Sans and Marta Junqué Surià, Raúl Velasco contributed ICTA-UAB's research perspective, focusing on the link between energy models, the organization of time and the boundaries of environmental sustainability. His contribution highlighted the importance of taking energy and ecological factors into account when designing time policies that promote more balanced paces of life.
The ICTA-UAB researcher shared the panel with a multidisciplinary team composed of Gemma Castaño-Vinyals, researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) and Pompeu Fabra University (UPF); Núria Codina Mata, Professor of Social Psychology of Leisure at the University of Barcelona; Sara Moreno Colom, researcher at the Sociological Research Centre on Everyday Life and Work (QUIT-UAB) and the Institute for Labour Studies (IET); and Elisenda Rentería Pérez, researcher at the Centre for Demographic Studies (CED-UAB). With this contribution, ICTA-UAB reaffirmed its role in the scientific analysis of key contemporary socio-environmental challenges.