Investigador
Rickard F. Sandell is Senior Research Fellow at IMDEA Ciencias Sociales (the Social Sciences Division of the Madrid Institute for Advanced Studies). He specializes in Organizational Sociology, International Migration and Demographic Processes. He is particularly interested in the importance of social networks for people’s decision-making processes, and in how decisions concerning migration and demographic behavior are shaped by an individual’s position in his social network. His research on those topics has been published in leading international academic journals including, among others, the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, ACTA Sociologica, the European Sociological Review, the Scandinavian Journal of Management and Rationality and Society, as well as in two books and several book chapters and monographs. Dr Sandell is also an internationally recognized authority in Spanish immigration and demographic trends. His research in these areas has received ample coverage in the media. In particular, his work on international immigration in Spain is frequently cited in both Spanish and international media outlays, such as The Economist, The Washington Post and The International Herald Tribune, among others. Born in Danderyd, Sweden, he graduated from Stockholm University in 1993 with a degree in Sociology, majoring in Human Resource Development and Labor Relations. He received his Ph.D. from the same university in 1998. An International Research Fellow of the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education, Dr Sandell has directed and participated in research projects sponsored by the Bank of Sweden’s Tercentenary Foundation and the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. He has been an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Stockholm University and a Visiting Professor at the Instituto Universitario de Estudios de Iberoamérica y Portugal at the University of Salamanca. From 2000 to 2003 he was head of the Council of Europe’s Population Division in Strasbourg, and Executive Secretary to the European Population Committee, where he was responsible for the Committee’s research projects as well as its well-known Recent Demographic Trends in Europe yearbook. Prior to joining IMDEA, Dr Sandell held the position of Senior Research Analyst at Elcano Royal Institute in Madrid, where he was responsible for the Institute’s Research Program in Demography, Population and International Migration.