Pompeu Fabra University (, ; ) is a
public university
A public university, state university, or public college is a university or college that is State ownership, owned by the state or receives significant funding from a government. Whether a national university is considered public varies from o ...
located in the city of
Barcelona
Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...
,
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a ''nationalities and regions of Spain, nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia of 2006, Statute of Autonomy. Most of its territory (except the Val d'Aran) is situate ...
in
Spain
Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...
. Established in 1990 by the Autonomous Government of Catalonia and named after
Pompeu Fabra
Pompeu Fabra i Poch (; Gràcia, Barcelona, 20 February 1868 – Prada de Conflent, 25 December 1948) was a Catalan engineer and grammarian. He was the main author of the normative reform of contemporary Catalan language, and is the namesa ...
, it is known for its competitiveness in research and commitment to transforming education for future challenges.
UPF has been recognized as the best university in Spain since 2015 and was ranked the 16th best young university globally in 2022 by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. It is known for its academic prestige and selective admissions, with many of its degree programs requiring high entrance grades.
The university excels in economics, political science, and law, with its Economics program ranked among the top 50 worldwide. The Faculty of Economics and Business Sciences is the only faculty in Spain to receive the Certificate for Quality in Internationalization. In 2010, UPF was designated an "International Excellence Campus" by the Spanish Ministry of Education.
Campuses

The university offers its studies around three areas of knowledge, each one developed on a different campus:
* the social sciences and humanities (Citadels Campus, next to
Parc de la Ciutadella)
* the health and life sciences (Mar Campus, next to the
Port Olímpic)
* the ICT and communication sciences (Poblenou Campus, next to the
Can Framis Museum
Can Framis is the latest Fundació Vila Casas museum, an art center in Barcelona devoted to the promotion of contemporary Catalan painting. Located in the old Can Framis factory complex, the museum displays more than 250 paintings from the sixtie ...
)
Teaching
Specifically, teaching is organized in seven faculties and one engineering school:
* Faculty of Health and Life Sciences
* Faculty of Economics and Business
* Faculty of Political and Social Sciences
* Faculty of Communication
* Faculty of Law
* Faculty of Humanities
* Faculty of Translation and Language Sciences
* Engineering School
Higher education affiliated centers
Finally, the university also has several higher education affiliated centers:
*
Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals
An institute is an organizational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body.
In some countries, institutes ca ...
(IBEI)
*
Tecnocampus
* UPF Barcelona School of Management
* International Trade Business School (ESCI)
* Mar University School of Nursing (ESIM)
Research

Research is organized in eight departments:
* Department of Experimental and Health Sciences
* Department of Political and Social Sciences
* Department of Communication
* Department of Law
* Department of Economics and Business
* Department of Humanities
* Department of Information and Communications Technologies
* Department of Translation and Language Sciences
Moreover, in order to promote research and transfer activities undertaken by university researchers and provide them with greater international visibility, the university is developing the UPF Research Park in the fields of social sciences, humanities, communication and information technologies. The UPF Research Park, which develops its activity at Ciutadella and Poblenou Campuses, coordinates its activities in the fields of health and life sciences with the
Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB), located at Mar Campus.
University institutes and research centres

*
Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals
An institute is an organizational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body.
In some countries, institutes ca ...
(IBEI) ''(interuniversity research institute)''
*
UPF-Centre for Animal Ethics (UPF-CAE) ''(think tank)''
*
Institut Universitari de Cultura (IUC) ''(research institute)''
*
Music Technology Group (MTG) ''(research group)''
*
Science Communication Observatory (OCC) ''(special research centre)''
* Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) ''(attached research university institute)''
*
Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) ''(attached research university institute)''
*
Barcelona School of Economics (BSE) ''(attached research university institute)''
* Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) ''(attached research university institute)''
*
Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE) ''(joint research institute)''
* Research Centre for International Economics (CREI) ''(participated research centre)''
* Institute for Political Economy and Governance (IPEG) ''(participated research centre)''
* BarcelonaBeta Brain Research Center ''(participated research centre)''
* Phonos Foundation ''(associated research centre)''
Research Centre for International Economics
The Research Centre for International Economics (''Centre de Recerca en Economia Internacional'' (CREI)) is a research institute sponsored by the government of Catalonia (
Generalitat de Catalunya
The Generalitat de Catalunya (; ; ), or the Government of Catalonia, is the institutional system by which Catalonia is self-governed as an autonomous community of Spain. It is made up of the Parliament of Catalonia, the President of the Govern ...
) and the UPF led by the economist
Jordi Galí. Its headquarters is on the campus of UPF in Barcelona, near the Department of Economics and Business at UPF (Ciutadella Campus), which collaborates in many research and teaching fields.
The research activities are focused on
international economics
International economics is concerned with the effects upon economic activity from international differences in productive resources and consumer preferences and the international institutions that affect them. It seeks to explain the patterns an ...
and macroeconomics (including growth, business cycles, monetary economics, macroeconometrics, trade and international finance, economic geography, etc.). It tries to emphasize these fields of studies in the European dimension.
Governance
Enric Argullol served as rector from the founding until June 2001, followed by
M. Rosa Virós i Galtier (2001–2005),
Josep Joan Moreso (2005–2013),
Jaume Casals (2013–2021) and
Oriol Amat (2021–2023). The current rector, Laia de Nadal, was elected in May 2023.
Rankings
The position of UPF is presented in the following international rankings
Times Higher Education (THE)Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) the one published b
U-Multirank (promoted by the EU) an
the Leiden ranking which is focused on research.
Notable alumni
*
Rita Almeida, economist
*
Pol Antràs
Pol Antràs Puchal (born June 30, 1975) is a Catalan economist who has served as the Robert G. Ory Professor of Economics at Harvard University since 2015.https://scholar.harvard.edu/sites/scholar.harvard.edu/files/cv_antras_oct_2024.pdf
Born i ...
, economist and professor at Harvard
*
Elsa Artadi, economist, academic and politician
*
Meritxell Batet, jurist and politician
*
Javier Beltrán, film and theatre actor
*
Genís Boadella, lawyer and politician
*
David Bonneville, London-based filmmaker
*
Gloria Aura Bortolini; journalist, photographer and filmmaker
*
Antonio Briceño
Antonio Briceño (born 5 December 1966) is a Venezuelan photographer and activist for environmental issues, ethnic minorities, and human rights. He has a graduate degree in biology from the Central University of Venezuela and a master's degree i ...
, photographer
*
Javier Calvo, writer
*
Diego Comin, economist
*
Lluís Galter, cinema director
*
Berta García Faet, poet, translator, and scholar of Hispanic literature
*
Uri Giné, musician
*
Míriam Hatibi, data analyst and activist
*
Joan Herrera i Torres, lawyer and politician
*
Teresa Colom i Pich, poet and novelist
*
Tatiana Huezo
Tatiana Huezo Sánchez (; born 9 January 1972) is a film director of Salvadoran and Mexican nationality, residing in Mexico. Her first film, ' (2011), a documentary about the Salvadoran Civil War, has been awarded internationally. In 2016 she ...
, film director of Salvadoran and Mexican nationality
*Kenmochi Hideki, inventor of
Vocaloid
is a singing Speech synthesis, voice synthesizer software product. Its signal processing part was developed through a joint research project between Yamaha Corporation and the Music Technology Group at Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona. The s ...
*
Isaki Lacuesta, film director
*
Oliver Laxe
Óliver Laxe Coro (; born 11 April 1982) is a French-born Spanish film director, screenwriter and actor of Galicians, Galician ancestry. His feature directorial debut, ''You All Are Captains'', premiered at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, where i ...
, film director, screenwriter and actor
*
Sergi Miquel, politician
*
Carles Mundó, lawyer and politician
*
Neus Munté, politician
*
Mónica Ojeda, Ecuadorian writer
*
Martha Lucía Ospina Martínez, first woman director of Colombia's Instituto Nacional de Salud
*
Marta Pascal, politician
*
Marta Rosique, politician
*
Gabriel Rufián, politician
*
Sandra Sabatés, journalist
*
Uwe Sunde, German economist
*
Roger Torrent, politician and urban planner
*
Nicole Vanden Broeck, filmmaker
*
Mireia Vehí, sociologist and politician
*
Alexia Putellas, professional footballer
*
Valeria Zalaquett, Chilean photographer and portraitist
Notable faculty
*
Maria Teresa Cabré, linguist
*
Jaume Casals, philosopher
*
Josep Joan Moreso, legal scholar
*
Vicenç Navarro
Vicente Navarro (born 1937 in Gironella, Spain) is a Spanish sociologist and political scientist. He has been a Professor of Health and Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University, US, for over 30 years. He is also Emeritus, emeritus professor in p ...
, sociologist
*
Xavier Sala-i-Martin, economist
*
Eugenio Trías Sagnier
Eugenio Trías Sagnier (31 August 1942 – 10 February 2013) was a Spanish philosopher. Critics have likened his work to Ortega y Gasset in the philosophical literature written in Spanish.
Biography
Trías was born in Barcelona. After obtaini ...
, philosopher
*
Teun A. van Dijk, linguist
*
Xavier Serra, music technology scholar
*
Andreu Mas-Colell
Andreu Mas-Colell (; born 29 June 1944) is an economist, an expert in microeconomics and a prominent mathematical economist. He is the founder of the Barcelona School of Economics and a professor in the department of economics at Pompeu Fabra ...
, economist
*
Jordi Galí, economist
*
Sergi Jordà, music technology scholar
*
Paul Verschure, cognitive systems and neuro-robotics
*
Lydia Zimmermann
Lydia Martina Zimmermann Kuoni (born 30 December 1966) is a Spaniards, Spanish Catalans, Catalan actress and film director.Aroca, María Victoria. Lydia Zimmermann, sencillez escogida�Archive. ''S Moda El País'' (in Spanish). 7 January 2012. R ...
, filmmaker
*
Gøsta Esping-Andersen, sociologist
*
Guillem López Casasnovas, economist
*
Xavier Freixas, economist
*
Ricardo Baeza-Yates
Ricardo A. Baeza-Yates (born March 21, 1961) is a Chilean computer scientist specializing in algorithms, data structures, information retrieval, web search and responsible AI. He is currently the Director of Research at the Institute for Experien ...
, computer scientist
*
Javier Díaz Noci, digital journalism researcher
*
Nuria Mas, professor and researcher, counselor
References
External links
The university's English-language websiteUPF's International Excellence Campus official website
{{Coord, 41, 22, 45, N, 2, 10, 47, E, region:ES-CT_type:edu, display=title
Education in Barcelona
Universities and colleges established in 1990
1990 establishments in Catalonia
Buildings and structures in Barcelona
Universities and colleges in Spain