Josep Vicent Pérez Cosín, new director of IIDL

The multidisciplinary team of the Interuniversitary Institute of Local Development (IIDL) has a new management for the next four years. Josep Vicent Pérez Cosín, social worker and doctor in sociology, has been chosen new director of the IIDL with a wide support of the extraordinary council members held on 1 December.

"The support of the team is needed so as to fulfil the commitment involved in the management of a wide human group that has a enormous potential", said Pérez Cosín. The new director has been more than 25 years connected with local development and more than 15 years assigned to the IIDL as senior researcher, where has actively participated in management tasks: in standing boards of previous management, as coordinator of the previous doctoral program of international cooperation and as a director of three editions of the University Master’s Degree in Management and Promotion of Local Development, among other contributions. In addition, he has been director of the Department of Social Work and Social Services from 2011 to 2017 and is director of the Master’s Degree in Social Welfare of the faculty of Social Sciences since 2017 until now. He teaches in two university degrees and five postgraduate studies, has supervised eleven doctoral thesis, and has published scientific articles in national and international renowned journals. Currently, he supervises the research group SOCIAL COMO, assigned to the IIDL, where aspects such as social cohesion and social dynamics are revised in a community level. He won the fist prospective research prize 2009 by Generalitat Valenciana resolution.

Pérez Cosín replaces María Dolores Pitarch, who was the director since December 2018 to December 2022. The aim of this new management is, among other objectives, consolidating the IIDL-UV as a coexistence area for all the professionals involved. In addition, not only want they to choose coordinators of thematic areas, but also to encourage bilateral agreements with research international centres or foreign universities.