Margarita León is an Associate Professor in the politics department of the Universitat Autònoma Barcelona and Research fellow at the Institute of Government and Public Policies (IGOP) of the same university. From 2003 until 2010 she was a lecturer in European social policy (SSPSSR, University of Kent). She was a Marie Curie fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. She holds a PhD from the London School of Economics (2000) and a MA in Sociological Research, University of Essex.  (1995). She was a Fulbright visiting scholar at Berkeley University, California, Spring-Summer 2018. She has co-edited with The Spanish Welfare State in European Context (2011 Ashgate) and edited The Transformation of Care in European Societies (2014, Palgrave).  She has published in many international journals such as Journal of European Social Policy, Social Politics, Social Policy & Administration, Comparative European Politics & South European Society and Politics

Research interests

Over the past years I have carried out research in a number of interelated fields within comparative public policy. My main research interests are welfare state reform, changes in the Sourthern European welfare state, work-life balance and care policies. My most recent research evolves around the Social Investment paradigm for social policies. I am the PI of ECECWEL, an ongoing research project funded by the Spanish Research & Development programme that looks at the political conditions of policy reform. I am also involved in Horizon 2020 project EUROSHOP that looks at the capacity of social protection systems in Europe to protect highly vulnerable workers. During 2000-2022 I have also worked on several co-authored comparative papers on the impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on social policy.

Keywords

Comparative public policy, welfare state research, social policy, gender policy, political systems