Marc Parés is a geographer and political scientist leading the Research Group on Urban Governance, Commons, Internet and Social Innovation at the Institute for Government and Public Policies (IGOP).  He teaches as Geography Professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain). In April 2019, he became a Member of the Catalan Parliament and he is currently in leave of absence at the University.

From 2014 to 2016 he had a Marie Curie Fellowship, being Visiting Scholar at the NYU Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service (USA) and the KU Leuven Planning and Development Unit (Belgium). He has also been a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Environment and Development at the University of Manchester (UK). He has a Ph.D., a MSc and a BSc in Environmental Sciences from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and a BA in Political Sciences from the same university.

His research has been focused on the fields of Urban Governance, Housing, Citizen Participation, Coproduction, Urban Political Ecology, Environmental Management and Social Innovation. He has published in journals like Urban Studies, Urban Affairs Review, European Planning Studies, Journal of Urban Affairs or the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. In 2009 he edited the book ‘Participation and Democratic Quality: assessing new forms of participatory democracy’, published by Ariel. He is co-author of the book “Social Innovation and Democratic Leadership: Communities and Social Change from Below”, recently published by Edward Elgar Publishing.

Download CV