Hi! I am Nina Lopez Uroz, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, in the Contested Ecologies research group.

Between 2021 and January 2026, I was a PhD researcher at the European University Institute (EUI)’s Department of Political and Social Science in Florence, under the supervision of Prof. Ellen Immergut. My PhD thesis bridged the fields of comparative political economy and policy studies to analyse the drivers of climate policy expansion in housing, especially regulatory (or "command-and-control") measures, like the 2023 ban on fossil fuel boilers in Germany and the 2021 rental ban on worst-energy-performing houses in France.

In my postdoc project "Greening the Home", I continue researching how states intervene to decarbonise housing, by greening energy supply through low-carbon technologies (heat pumps, district heating, biogas) and reducing energy demand via housing retrofits. I argue that these two logics mobilise distinct constituencies with sometimes competing interests - and I study comparatively how these struggles unfold in the European context, depending on pre-existing housing and energy regimes.

I also pursue collaborative mixed-methods research projects on other aspects of environmental politics, such as climate education, adaptation to drought, and agriculture, combining in-depth interviews and experimental methods. This research has been published in high-ranking scientific outlets, like Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and New Political Economy.

In 2023-2024, I was Visiting PhD Researcher at the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics at Sciences Po Paris and at the Centre for Sustainability of the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. I was also course instructor at the Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf and at the University of Lucerne with seminars on the politics of environmental crises and climate change mitigation policy.

Before joining the EUI, I worked for two years as research assistant at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels in the Jobs & Skills Unit, specialising in social policy, gender equality, industrial relations and the EU policy-making process. I graduated with distinction in 2019 from a dual Master’s degree in European Public Policy and Political Economy from the London School of Economics (LSE) and Sciences Po Paris, and won a departmental prize for my dissertation on the socio-political effects of the Polish growth model. I also hold since 2017 a Bachelor in Social Sciences from Sciences Po Paris and spent a year at the Humboldt University's Social Sciences Institute in 2016-2017.