Rut Bermejo Casado

Rut Bermejo Casado is Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Elcano Royal Institute and an Associate Professor of Politics and Public Policy at Rey Juan Carlos University (Faculty of Law and Political Science) in Madrid.

She is a member of the Good Governance Observatory/research group, and she serves on the Advisory Council at the Chair in Refugees and Forced Migrants at the Comillas Pontifical University and on the Alliance of Civilizations Chair at the Euro Mediterranean University of Fez. She is highly engaged in several European and US academic networks, such as IMMISCOE, APSA, ECPR and CES.

She is also a member of the Doctoral Programme in Economics and Government at the Instituto Universitario Ortega y Gasset/UIMP and participates in the MSCA Doctoral Network EU-GLOCTER. Additionally, she has taught courses at the Organisation of American States, as well as in master’s programmes at the IMSISS Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Degree, the University of Alcalá de Henares, and the University of Burgos.

She has furthered her research as a Visiting Fellow at the University of Nottingham and is currently an Academic Visiting Scholar at the University of St Andrews (School of International Relations), having received grants from various foundations (such as CaixaBank) and government departments.

Prior to completing her PhD in European Studies (URJC), she obtained an MA in Politics from the University of Warwick. She holds a degree in Law from the Complutense University of Madrid and a degree in Politics and Sociology from UNED.

Research areas

Her primary research area encompasses Justice and Home Affairs public policies in Europe, with a particular focus on migration and refugee policies. She is also very interested in research designs and methodologies. Notably, she has recently been involved as URJC main researcher in various European research projects. In the PERCEPTIONS project (H2020), she spearheaded the research work package, which aimed at analysing the role of information campaigns in migrants’ perceptions of Europe. She is currently the lead researcher for URJC in the RESONANT project (Horizon Europe), which explores the practices of disinformation and information suppression by non-democratic countries and their impact on diasporas living in Europe.

Selected publications

• In press. With Juan Iglesias (2025) “Welcome refugees? El Sistema de Asilo en España.” Latin American Perspectives.
• In press. With Isabel Bazaga and Sara Carrasco, “Negotiated and relational discretion in day-to-day LEA’s implementation practices at European sea, land and airport borders”, Political Research Exchange, special issue coordinated by A. Crossby, F. Infantino, L. Lemaire and C. M Germe “Searching the Power of Discretion. The Implementation of Migration Policies Through Relational Approaches.
• 2024. With Iglesias, J. and I. Bazaga, “Beyond the asylum-applications growth. The limits of the Spanish refugee reception program”, International Migration, https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.13235
• 2023. With Carrasco-Granger, S., Le Louvier, K. and K. L. Hough “Structural Political-Institutional and Economic Barriers to Integration in the United Kingdom and Spain: A practitioners’ account”, Journal of Immigration, Asylum & Nationality Law, vol 37 (1), pp. 91-106.
• 2022. With M. Hazán, “Spain. The Uneasy Transition from Labor Exporter to Labor Importer and the New Challenges Ahead” in James Hollifield, Philip Martin and Pia Orrenius (eds), Controlling immigration: A global perspective, Stanford: Stanford University Press.  (4th ed.)
• 2022. With J.M Sánchez-Duarte, “From a digital breach to a usage and positioning gap. ICT use in migrant women arriving to Spain since 2015”, in Akhgar, B., K. L. Hough, Y. A. Samad, P. S. Bayerl, and A. Karakostas “Information and Communications Technology in Support of Migration”, Springer, pp 93-112.