We investigate how religion, non-religion and spirituality are evolving in Spain and their social impact. A coordinated project led by the University of Salamanca and the National Distance Education University (UNED).
RECHANGE: Religious Diversity and Social Change: New Realities of Religion and Non-Religion in Spain is an interdisciplinary research project jointly coordinated by the University of Salamanca and the National University of Distance Education (UNED). The project examines religion in Spain as a dynamic process of transformation. In a context shaped by profound social and cultural change, it explores how religious beliefs, non-religion and emerging forms of spirituality are being reconfigured. It also analyses how increasing religious diversity resulting from immigration is influencing social cohesion, identities and everyday social life in contemporary Spain.
RECHANGE is an interdisciplinary research project that examines religion in Spain as a phenomenon undergoing constant transformation. In a context of profound social change, we analyse how beliefs, non-religion and spirituality are evolving.
Religious beliefs, religious plurality and new forms of spirituality are transforming Spanish society. The RECHANGE project analyses these changes in order to better understand the relationship between religion, non-religion, diversity and society. Meet the research team and explore their studies on religious change in Spain.
Explore the RECHANGE project team and their research on changes in religion, spirituality and religious diversity in Spain.
Discover our seminars, conferences and spaces for dialogue on religion and social change.
Mikolaj Stanek is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Communication at the University of Salamanca. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the Complutense University of Madrid. Over the course of his career, he has worked at the Complutense University of Madrid, the Spanish National Research Council, and the University of Coimbra. He has served as an external expert for the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) and the European Migration Network (EMN). His research interests are broad and include religious change from a population perspective, population health, and migration processes.
Zakaria Sajir is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Communication at the University of Salamanca and a member of the Research Group “Labour Market, Migration and Health” (M2S). He is also affiliated with the University Institute for the Sciences of Religions (IUCR) and the Analysis Group on Islam and Arab-Islamic Cultures in Transnational Contexts (GRAIS) at the Complutense University of Madrid. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Leicester and previously held a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Economics, Geography and Demography (CSIC) in Madrid. Since 2025 he has served on the Executive Board of Research Committee 16 (Sociology of Religion) of the Spanish Federation of Sociology (FES), where he is Secretary. His research focuses on migration, labour exploitation, structural discrimination and the governance of religious and ethnic diversity in Europe.
Chiara Dello Iacono is a postdoctoral researcher in Social Sciences at the University of Salamanca. She holds a diploma in Social Work and a master's degree in Public Services and Social Policies from the University of Molise (Italy). She completed her doctoral thesis within the project "Demographic convergences and divergences between natives and immigrants in Spain Demodata," funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation. She has carried out research stays at the Department of Public Health at Stockholm University (Sweden) and with the "Interface Demography" research group at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium).
Alba Teresa González Esteban is a doctoral student in Social Sciences at the University of Salamanca. She holds a degree in Sociology from the University of Salamanca (2019-2023). She has completed a Master's Degree in Applied Sociology: Social Problems at the Complutense University of Madrid (2023-2025) and is currently pursuing a Master's Degree in Social and Educational Intervention with Children and Adolescents at the University of Salamanca (2025-2026).
Cristina Rodríguez Reche is a social anthropologist and postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, UPF. She is a member of the INMIX-UAB research group (2021SGR-181, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), where she studies migration, racialization, mixedness, social cohesion, and everyday experiences of discrimination. Her work combines ethnographic and critical approaches to examine how race, belonging, and coexistence are negotiated in local contexts. She has published in journals such as Migraciones, Social Compass, Sociology Compass, and Ethnicities, and collaborates with international networks focused on diversity and social justice, including RACED SC (IMISCOE) and EUARE.
Rafael Ruiz Andrés is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid and holds a PhD in Religious Studies (2019). His research focuses on the sociology of religion, with particular attention to secularization, non-religion, and religious pluralism. He is the author of La secularización en España (Cátedra, 2022) and co-editor, with Zakaria Sajir, of Religious Diversity in Post-Secular Societies (Springer, 2025). He has participated in the Europaeum Scholarship Programme and undertaken research stays at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris and the Social Research Institute at University College London. He is also a visiting professor at Sapienza Università di Roma.
Carmen is a postdoctoral researcher in the psychology of religion at the University of Navarra, currently in her second postdoctoral appointment. Her first postdoc was part of a Templeton Foundation-funded project on the psychological foundations of divine forgiveness. She holds a BA in Philosophy, two MAs (Education; Cultural and Religious Studies), and a PhD in Psychology from the University of Granada on cultural and religious conceptions of time. She has held research stays at UCSB (Fulbright), Boston University, Harvard, and other institutions. Her current work focuses on forgiveness, well-being, lived religious experience, and fostering open, transparent, and reproducible scientific practices.
Miguel Requena (PhD, Complutense University of Madrid) is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Social Structure at UNED (National University of Distance Education, Madrid, Spain) and a member of the Population and Society Research Group. He has been a member of the Technical Corps of the Centre for Sociological Research (CIS), an Associate Researcher at the Institute of Advanced Social Studies–Spanish National Research Council (IESA-CSIC), a Senior Associate Member at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, and a Visiting Professor at Hamilton College, Princeton University, and Stanford University. His research interests include demography, family, social structure, and social change.
Ali El Yemlahy Chouati es doctorando en Sociología en la Universidad de Salamanca, especializado en Sociología de la Religión, Migraciones e Islam. Su perfil es multidisciplinar, integrando sociología, derecho, economía, teología, filosofía y psicología. Es máster en Derecho (UC3M) y en Gestión Administrativa (UAX), economista colegiado (CEMAD) y graduado en Comercio (UCM). Actualmente cursa un máster en Filosofía de la Religión (LFU), Licenciatura en estudios islámicos en (Al-Azhar) y Grado en Psicología en la UOC. Participa en seminarios sobre islam en Europa y combina investigación y divulgación. Forma parte del GRAIS (Grupo de Análisis sobre Islam y Culturas Arabo-islámicas en Contextos Transnacionales). Sus intereses incluyen ateísmo, religión comparada, esoterismo, secularismo e historia.
I research and photograph our relationship with death, with a particular interest in the intersection between finitude and religion. I hold a double degree in Political Science and Sociology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, as well as a master’s degree in Anthropology and Ethnography from the University of Barcelona. I am affiliated with ISOR-UAB (Investigations in the Sociology of Religion) and collaborate with GREMHER-UB (Research Group on Mysticism and Religious Heterodoxies). My doctoral thesis is carried out under a research contract linked to the R&D&I project RECHANGE (Non-religion in Spain: Exploring irreligion, spirituality, and religious transformations).
I am an Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology II of the National University of Distance Education (UNED, Madrid). I have been a visiting researcher at the Department of Sociology at the Free University of Amsterdam (VU), MZES (University of Mannheim), COMPAS (University of Oxford), AIAS (UvA University of Amsterdam), and AMCIS (UvA University of Amsterdam). I am President of the Research Committee CI-25 (Sociology of Migrations) of the Spanish Federation of Sociology (FES) for 2025-2028. In 2025 I have obtained a Beca Leonardo grant for Scientific Research and Cultural Creation in the area of Social Sciences, financed by the BBVA Foundation.
Juan Ignacio Martínez Pastor is an Associate Professor of Sociology at UNED. His work has focused on understanding how employment, social inequalities and family dynamics are changing in contemporary societies. He has also studied the interpretation of social statistics, the erotic capital and the use of quantitative methods and experimental designs. He is currently researching, among other topics, the social factors that influence taste in modern and contemporary art. He has been Director of Research at the CIS and Vice-Dean of Research at the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology at UNED.
María Miyar holds a degree in Economics from the University of Oviedo and a PhD in Sociology from the National Distance Education University (UNED). Since 2008, she has been a lecturer in the Department of Sociology II (Social Structure) at UNED. She has been a visiting researcher at the Inter-American Development Bank (Washington, D.C.) and the Institute for Fiscal Studies (Madrid). Her research focuses on the analysis of immigrants’ labour market integration and the determinants of migration flows. The results of some of this research have been published in journals such as International Migration, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and European Journal of Education.
I am a senior researcher at the Centre for Sociological Research and the former Director of the Office of the High Commissioner against Child Poverty. I hold a PhD in Social Sciences from the European University Institute. My research interests focus on social stratification, inequality, poverty, and immigration, with a particular emphasis on immigrant descendants. My work has been published in high-impact journals, including Child Indicators Research, International Migration, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and Nutrients. I am also a member of the UNPACK research project team (2025–2028), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities.
I am a sociologist from Argentina and currently a Ramón y Cajal Fellow in the Department of Sociology II at the National University of Distance Education (UNED, Madrid). I am also an affiliated researcher at CEDH, University of San Andrés (Buenos Aires). Before joining UNED, I was the Principal Investigator of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie project GLAM – Global South Migration and Comparative Integration: A Study of South American Migrants, funded by the European Union. My work has been published in high-impact journals such as Sociology, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, International Migration Review, and Population, Space and Place.
I am a Professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam and leader of the AISSR programme group Institutions, Inequalities and Life Courses. I previously held positions as Associate and Assistant Professor at Utrecht University Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science and as researcher at the European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations. I obtained my PhD from Utrecht University and the University of Leuven for the dissertation; Second-generation Muslims in European societies: Comparative Perspectives on Education and Religion. My research focuses on immigration integration and religion and was recently awarded with a Research Talent grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO).
I am an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Lausanne (UNIL) and the University of Amsterdam (UvA). At UNIL, I am a member of the Life Course and Inequality Centre (LIVES) and collaborate closely with the Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences (FORS).
My research focuses on educational and labor market vulnerabilities from cross-national and intersectional perspectives. I am currently the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council (ERC) project PROFEM (2023- 2028) and a Co-PI of the HORIZON Europe project EQUALSTRENGTH (2023-2026). Both projects explore the integration of (female) immigrants and their experiences of discrimination in host societies, using experimental methods.
In addition, I lead the Swiss Generation and Gender Programme (GGP), which collects comparative data on family dynamics, gender relations, and life course trajectories. I also serve as Secretary General of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), which conducts comparative survey research in 45 countries worldwide.
