Zenia Hellgren is doctor of sociology and senior researcher at GRITIM-UPF (The interdisciplinary research group on immigration), Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain. Currently she is Principal Investigator of the EU funded research-action project AGREP (Action program for effective reporting of anti-gypsyism and discrimination).
Her research on immigration, integration and diversity engages with key concepts and issues in social and political theorizing such as agency, citizenship and inclusion, institutions and regimes, stakeholders, (in)equality, discrimination, racialization, precariousness, gender and intersectionality. Since she completed her PhD at Stockholm University in 2012, she has won four competitive calls (three at the EU level and one at the national, Swedish level) for research projects that she has herself designed and proposed. The empirical dimension is essential in her scholarship: she largely conducts qualitative field studies, often applying ethnographic methods to collect extensive data. In her three most recent, EU funded research projects, she has developed a methodological approach inspired by Participatory Action Research (PAR). This means emphasizing the active role of the researcher as part of the social reality that is being studied, with the objective of contributing to social change beyond merely interpreting the empirical findings.
The translation of contemporary political and social dynamics into theorizing is a cornerstone of her work, which she has published in numerous peer-reviewed academic journals and edited volumes. She also strives to strengthen the interrelation between academia and the social and political spheres, developing contacts with policy-making actors and representatives of the third sector throughout her trajectory as a researcher, and disseminating her research also through non-academic publications in formats such as policy papers and reports, and media articles. This is guided by her perspective that research should be useful not only at the scientific level, but also for society in general, and for the often vulnerable groups – migrants and minorities – that constitute her “study objects” in particular.
Zenia Hellgren currently teaches two courses at the Pompeu Fabra University: “Diversity, Discrimination and Citizenship” at the Master in migration studies programme, and “Immigration and the labour market” (in Spanish) at the undergraduate program in Labour Relations. Formerly, she taught sociological theory and qualitative methods at Stockholm University. She is also a thesis supervisor at the PhD and Master programmes at the Department of Political and Social Sciences (UPF).