Irene Sabaté

Irene Sabaté Muriel is a researcher in social Anthropology and an associate professor at the Universitat de Barcelona, where she teaches economic and urban anthropology at undergraduate and graduate levels. She also supervises masters and doctoral theses and serves at various committees within her department and faculty.

Her research interests include moral and political economy, reciprocity and provisioning, work and social reproduction, housing, debt and credit relations, and financialization. After addressing the transformations of housing provisioning in post-unification Berlin for her doctoral dissertation, presented in 2009, she has been researching the Spanish mortgage crisis since 2012. She is currently the co-PI of a project, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, entitled «Tensions between the right to housing and private ownership in rental relations. A socio-legal approach», on discrimination in the rental market and on squatting practices in Catalonia. She is the author of several scientific articles and chapters, as well as the books “Habitar tras el Muro. La cuestión de la vivienda en el este de Berlín” (Icaria, 2012) and “Moradoras. Mujeres en lucha por la habitación propia” (Bellaterra, 2024 forthcoming).

She serves as a Board member at the Observatori dels Drets Econòmics, Socials, Culturals i Ambientals (ODESCA), and keeps a public engagement with housing justice movements.