Skip to content
GOLTC | Globe Icon

Daniel López

Department of Psychology and Education, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya


Daniel López

Daniel Lopez Gomez (UOC) is a Professor of Social Psychology at the Faculty of Psychology and Education and co-director of the CareNet research group at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3). Daniel works at the intersection of Science and Technology Studies and Aging Studies. His main area of research is the emergence of care infrastructures in a context of demographic transition and “care crisis”, particularly the development and consequences of the digitalisation of care(telecare, telemedicine, social media) as well as of new environments, living arrangements and long-term care facilities for the so-called ‘aging society’. More recently, he’s developing an interest in topics such as disasters and aging, which comprise the impact of disasters on older people as well as the imaginaries and practices of disaster preparedness in aging; more-than-human aging, particularly life-course transitions and care with companion animals; and aging infrastructures and maintenance, repair and discard practices.

Daniel has long experience as a researcher and principal investigator in national and international projects. It is worth mentioning EFORTT (FP7) and VALUE-AGEING (FP7), two projects devoted to the ethical and social consequences of e-health and telecare development for older people, the latter as postdoc Marie-Curie researcher at the Law, Science and Technology Studies (LSTs), Vrije Universitet Brussel (Belgium). He has also been involved in CUIDAR (H2020), a participatory project with children and young people on disaster risk reduction, and the Spanish coordinator of a project on smart technologies and Responsible Research Innovation, CANDID(H2020). In 2015, he was awarded a Leonardo BBVA Grant for talented researchers and artists to develop the first study of the senior cohousing movement in Spain (MOVICOMA). More recently, he has been principal investigator of BCONNECT@Home, a European JPI project on aging, social connectedness and digital life and led the qualitative study of RESICOVID-19, a project funded by the Catalan government about the impact(s) of the pandemics in the residential care system of Catalonia.

He has been visiting scholar at the Departament of Anthropology of the University of Copenhagen in 2019, at the Department of Sociology of the Universidad Andrés Bello (Chile), also in 2019, and at the Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process (CSISP), Sociology Department of Goldsmiths (UK) in 2011. He has been a board member of the Catalan Society for Geriatrics and Gerontology, a founding member of the Socio-gerontechnology network and the Spanish STS network and of the organising committee of the 2016 EASST/4s Joint Conference in Barcelona.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Countries Spain;
Topics Ageing in place; Autonomy; Care innovations; Community-based LTC; Deinstitutionalisation; Digital Technology; Ethics and care; Housing and care; Living arrangements; Robots and LTC; Social connection; Social Innovation in LTC; Technology and LTC;
Methods Co-production methods; Creative research methods; Critical Discourse Analysis; Discourse analysis; Ethnography; Focus groups; Grounded Theory; Longitudinal qualitative studies; Participatory research methods; Qualitative studies; Research ethics;
Role Research;
Interest Groups Ageing and Place; Climate Change and LTC; Community-based approaches to dementia care; Innovation in Long-Term Care; Long-Term Care in Spain; Qualitative Research; Technology and Long-Term Care;
Websitehttps://carenet.in3.uoc.edu/investigadors/daniel-lopez-gomez/
Key publications

López-Gómez, D., & Rodríguez-Giralt, I. (2024). The relational, emotional and infrastructural work of older people in pandemic digital interventions. Information, Communication & Society27(4), 790–805.

Schwennesen, N., & Lopez Gomez, D. (2025). Becoming Old with a Dog Human-Animal Entanglements in Later-Life Transitions. En Cristina Douglas and Andrew Whitehouse (Eds.). More-than-human Aging: Animals, Robots, and Care in Later Life (pp. 56-72). Rutgers University Press.

López Gómez, D., Estrada Canal, M., & Farré Montalà, L. (2020). Havens and Heavens of Ageing-in-Community: Home, Care and Age in Senior Co-housing. In B. Pasveer, O. Synnes, & I. Moser (Eds.), Ways of Home Making in Care for Later Life(pp. 159-181). Singapore: Springer Singapore.

López, D. (2015). Little arrangements that matter. Rethinking autonomy-enabling innovations for later life. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 93, 91-101.