About
Who we are
Who we are
Christian Academics Barcelona began in autumn 2026, when the Association of Christian Postgraduate Groups asked a Barcelona PhD candidate to gather the Christians doing research across the city. Barcelona has five large universities and one of Europe’s densest clusters of research institutes, with thousands of PhD students and postdocs from everywhere. Many of them are Christians. Almost none of them knew each other.
What we do
- Meet monthly — the second Wednesday of the month, 19:30, over dinner. A short framing, a real discussion (this year: the Gospel & Academia Project’s 7 Distinctions for Relating the Gospel to Academic Work), and prayer for one another’s research, supervisors, deadlines and colleagues.
- Practise speaking — twice a year members give short talks from their own research to a friendly, critical room. It’s how the best public Christian academics learned.
- Open the doors — a few times a year a Christian academic addresses a big question from their field in a bar or a university room; anyone can come and anyone can push back.
- Stay human — a social each term; welcome evenings for new arrivals in autumn and January.
What we are not
Not a church (we send you back to yours), not a denomination, not an undergraduate society, not an academic association. Just a fellowship — the specialist kind that only people who know what a viva or a grant deadline feels like can offer each other.
What we believe
We are an evangelical Christian fellowship. Our leaders affirm the IFES doctrinal basis. Members don’t sign anything; they come. Christians of every tradition are welcome, and so are friends who are not Christians at all — especially at our open events.
Who’s behind us
We belong to the Association of Christian Postgraduate Groups, the postgraduate initiative of Good News for the University, IFES Europe’s ministry for the relationship between the gospel and academic work. The Association links around thirty self-led groups in ten countries — Cambridge, London, Zurich, Lausanne, Munich, Naples, Warsaw, Tenerife and more — and assigns each group a senior academic mentor. Its shared resources are hosted by the Gospel & Academia Project. In Barcelona we work alongside GB Unidos, Spain’s IFES movement, which is headquartered in the city.
People
Christoph
Leader · ESADE Business School (Universitat Ramon Llull)
Finance PhD candidate at ESADE in Barcelona; Forming a Christian Mind Fellow (Cambridge); member of the FEUER Academic Speakers' Network. He started Christian Academics Barcelona in autumn 2026 at the invitation of the Association of Christian Postgraduate Groups.
Association mentor: A senior academic from the Association accompanies the group and its leader.
Contact
Questions, ideas, a colleague to introduce? Write to us.