I'm a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science and Public Law of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. I'm a member of the Democracy, Elections and Citizenship research group and of the "The Rural-Urban Divide in Europe" (RUDE) project. 

I've been a visiting researcher at the Chair of Sociology with Focus on Social Conflict and Social Change (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt), led by Prof. Sigrid Roßteutscher, between April and July 2025.

I hold a BA in Political and Administration Sciences by Universitat Pompeu Fabra, a MA in Political Science by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and a postgraduate degree in Data Analysis by the Universitat de Barcelona. 

My areas of interest include political geography (especially rural-urban and centre-periphery divides) in relation to both political attitudes and behaviour, and political representation and party systems in a broad sense. 

The RUDE project examines whether and how urban-rural residency is related to divides in legitimacy beliefs, social identities, perceptions of injustice and threat, political and social attitudes and political behaviour of European citizens, specifically in five democracies (France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and the UK). 

My PhD thesis project ("Political discontent in rural areas: insights from the case of Spain") is supervised by Prof. Guillem Rico and Prof. Enrique Hernández and it focuses on how contextual -geographical, economic, institutional and policy-related- factors shape political discontent in rural and peripheral areas. This project aims, based on the study of the case of Spain, to detect potential more general factors. My work has been published in West European Politics, Electoral Studies, Political Geography and the Journal of Rural Studies. 

If you would like to know more about my research, you can have a look here or contact me via ruben.garcia@uab.cat!