Toni Luna

Barcelona

Toni Luna is a geographer, educator, and researcher at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), where he has taught since 1996. Over nearly three decades, he has played a central role in shaping UPF’s internationalisation strategy, interdisciplinary teaching, and the development of innovative academic programmes. His career reflects a sustained commitment to connecting research, pedagogy, and public engagement across diverse scales and sectors. Toni has held several key leadership roles at UPF, including Academic Coordinator of International Programs, Head of the Humanities Department, Academic Coordinator of the Global Studies Degree, and Vice-Rector for International Relations. He currently serves as Director of the Chair in Metropolitan Futures (Càtedra de Futurs Metropolitans), a collaborative initiative between UPF and Barcelona Regional dedicated to exploring the long-term social, environmental, infrastructural, and cultural transformations shaping metropolitan Barcelona. In this role, he works to bridge academic expertise with public institutions, fostering research, debate, and innovation around sustainable and equitable urban futures. His teaching covers geography, global studies, cultural landscapes, environmental sustainability, and urban transformation. He has a long-standing commitment to experiential and field-based learning, frequently leading students on academic trips to Geneva, France, Tangier, and regions across Catalonia. These immersive experiences help students encounter global governance, borders, cultural policies, and sustainability challenges firsthand. Toni understands teaching as a form of life where knowledge, care, and curiosity are passed through generations of learners to shape future citizens and professionals. Toni’s research interests span cultural policy, urban evolution, geohumanities, social territoriality, and sustainability, with particular attention to European and Mediterranean contexts. He explores how creative practices, narratives, and artistic collaborations reshape understandings of place, identity, and resilience. His work has contributed to multiple national and European research initiatives, including Horizon Europe proposals on farming narratives, public engagement, environmental governance, and innovative qualitative methodologies. Recent projects also investigate participatory cartographies, community-led water governance, and the role of storytelling in territorial transformation. Across all of his roles as professor, researcher, administrator, mentor, and director of the Chair in Metropolitan Futures, Toni is guided by the conviction that geography is not merely an academic discipline, but a way of understanding interconnected worlds and imagining more just, inclusive, and sustainable futures. His career is defined by building bridges: between research and teaching, between institutions and communities, and between inherited knowledge and emerging possibilities.