Miguel A. Martínez (BA-MA Sociology, University Complutense of Madrid; PhD Political Science, University of Santiago de Compostela) is Professor of Housing and Urban Sociology at the IBF (Institute for Housing and Urban Research), Uppsala University (Sweden). His first interests focused on Participatory-Action-Research methods and processes. These were applied to the study of citizen participation in urban planning and urban movements, which nurtured his PhD dissertation in 2000. Afterwards, he held teaching positions in different universities of Spain, Portugal and Hong Kong. He also was a visiting scholar in universities of Colombia, China, Portugal and the United States, and conducted empirical fieldwork in cities such as Porto, Vigo, Madrid, Hong Kong, Medellin, Chicago, Beijing, Berlin, Amsterdam, Buenos Aires, and Belo Horizonte. In addition, he has participated in various social movements.
He currently studies social movements and urban phenomena from a sociological perspective. In particular, he investigates housing activism in Spain, Europe and Latin America. Other topics covered by his research are urban sustainability, segregation, housing policies, migration, density, globalisation, urban mobility, urban politics, governance, labour, and social structures. His publications have appeared in journals such as Housing Studies, Antipode, Urban Studies, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, International Journal of Housing Policy, Social Movement Studies, Interface, Paretecipazione e Conflitto, Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas, etc. He is the author of Squatters in the Capitalist City (Routledge, 2020), editor of The Urban Politics of Squatters’ Movements (Palgrave, 2018), and co-editor of Contested Cities and Urban Activism (Palgrave, 2019). Most of his publications are freely available at: www.miguelangelmartinez.net