Pedro Romero-Balsas (pedro.romero@uam.es) is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the Autonomous University of Madrid. He holds an international PhD, awarded Cum Laude, in Sociology, and received the Extraordinary Doctoral Prize from the Autonomous University of Madrid in 2014. He holds a degree in Sociology (University of Alicante), a Master’s degree in Social Anthropology (University of Murcia), and a university-specific Master’s degree in Multivariate Statistical Techniques from UNED.
He has been a visiting researcher at the Thomas Coram Research Unit (University College London), the MESOPOLHIS laboratory at Aix-Marseille University (France), the Federal Institute for Population Research (Germany), and the Department of Sociology and Political Science at NTNU (Norway).
He is a member of the research group ‘Analysis of Family Change’, where he carries out most of his research activity. Since 2012, he has published research findings in specialised fields related to the sociology of the family, organisations, and work. He has participated in five competitive national research projects funded by different ministries.
He is currently a member of the research team for the project “The impact of parental leave policies and early childhood education centres on family dynamics in Spain (QUIDAN 2)”, directed by Gerardo Meil. He is also the leader of the “Parenting Leave Terminologies” group within COST-ACTION CA21150 (Parental Leave Policies and Social Sustainability, 2022–2026). In addition, he is an external member of the Finnish national competitive project “The Parental Night Shift: Gendered Inequalities in Night-time Care”.
His research areas include the sociology of families, childcare leave policies, fatherhood, parenting, multicultural families, work–life balance, labour mobility, and public policies. He has been awarded two six-year research periods and two five-year teaching periods
He has published 24 research articles, mostly in international journals indexed in leading databases such as the Journal Citation Reports. Some of the journals in which he has published are key references in the fields of family sociology, organisations, and masculinities, including Gender, Work and Organization, Men and Masculinities, Social Policy and Society, Journal of Family Research, Journal of Family Issues, Community, Work and Family, Families, Relationships and Societies, Contemporary Social Science, Early Childhood Education Journal, and Quality and Quantity. He has also published in leading Spanish sociology journals such as the Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas and the Revista Internacional de Sociología. He has served as guest editor for a special issue of the Journal of Family Research.
He is the author or co-author of 12 book chapters in well-regarded academic publishers such as Springer and Palgrave Macmillan. In Spain, he has published with Tirant and Comares. He has also edited collective volumes for Bristol University Press and CIS (forthcoming). He has authored a report on childcare leave terminology and two textbooks on the sociology of organisations with Síntesis and Grupo5.
Since 2011, he has delivered 40 oral communications at conferences—22 international and 18 national. His participation includes contributions to the European Sociological Association (ESA), the International Sociological Association (ISA), the European Society on Family Relations (ESFR), the Spanish Network of Social Policies (REPS), and the Spanish Federation of Sociology (FES).
He has been a member of the Board of RN13 within the European Sociological Association (ESA) since 2014. He served on the Executive Board of the European Society on Family Relations (ESFR) from 2014 to 2018, and on the Research Committee on Family Sociology (CI03) of the Spanish Federation of Sociology (FES) from 2020 to 2024. He was a member of the local organising committee for the 7th ESFR Congress in Madrid (2014), the XXIII SASE Conference, and the local organiser of the ESA RN13 Interim Meeting in 2023.
He has served as a reviewer for research agencies, such as the Andalusian Agency for Scientific and University Quality, and for several social science research journals, including Community, Work & Family, Journal of Family Issues, and European Societies.
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