Dr. Mónica Grau-Sarabia is a researcher specialized in economic justice for women, empowerment, and institutional transformation. Her work takes an interdisciplinary approach that brings together social psychology, organizational studies, feminist economics, and gender studies.

She holds a PhD in Citizenship and Human Rights from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona, and a Diploma of Advanced Studies from the Department of Social Psychology at the same university. She also earned a Master’s in Human Development from the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom, and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Valencia, with a specialization in Social Psychology from Paul Valéry University, Montpellier III, France.

She was the principal investigator of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie project Women’s Economic and Psychological Empowerment – EMPOWER (CN 893546), developed in collaboration with CARE International and the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Through the EMPOWER project, she examined empowerment policies in the context of development and international cooperation from a psychosocial perspective. As part of this work, she developed and field-tested a quantitative tool in Guatemala with 512 participants to assess perceptions of agency, alongside qualitative assessments of subjectivities.

She also coordinated the European project Women Innovators for Social Business in Europe (WISE) at ESADE Business School in Barcelona. WISE was the first European study focused on women social entrepreneurs and involved a comprehensive, cross-national study (N = 497) examining the systemic barriers faced by women in social impact initiatives. This work laid the foundation for the creation of the first European network for women social entrepreneurs and the development of an innovative blended learning program.

At Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), she has led a research project on gender perspectives in the digital economy over the past 25 years, the findings of which are contributing to both academic and policy debates. She is currently a member of the Gender and Technology research group (GenTIC), where she explores issues at the intersection of gender, technology, and work.

Interests: feminist economics, gender and development, political economy, informal economy, labour, women’s labour, women’s economic empowerment, unpaid work, care work, care economy, digital economy, agency, subjectivity.

Contact:

E-mail: mgrausar@uoc.edu   
ORCID: 0000-0002-0792-7971