The professor joins as a corresponding academic in València to the professor of Contemporary History and former rector of the University of Valencia, Pedro Ruiz Torres, who joined the institution in 1988.

Josep.L.Barona is a visiting researcher at the Faculty of Advanced Studies (Kumamoto, Japan) from 2016, also was an investigator at the Rockafeller Archive Center (New York) and an investigator Salvador de Madariaga at the European University Institute (Florence). Visiting professor at the Oxford Universities (Trinity College, Wellcome Unit for History of Medicine) and Bargen. Moreover, he is a member of del Institut d’Estudis Catalans (Secció de Ciències Biològiques), the Real Academia de Medicina de la Comunidad Valenciana and the Instituto de Estudios Medievales y Renacentistas y de Humanidades Digitales, de la Universidad de Salamanca.

His main lines of research are centered in the policies of health, international diplomacy and in nutrition policies in the crises of interwar Europe from a transnational perspective. He has developed studies on the exile of republican doctors and scientists, on rural health and on the history of contemporary physiology. His works claim health and illness as an essential reference for the evolution of societies. He has dedicated works to the exile of Republican doctors and scientists and to the history of physiology.

Among his most recent publication appear: History of Health and Medicine. A transcultural approach (Routledge, 2026), Nutritional Policies and International Diplomacy (Peter Lang, 2021); and Health Policies in interwar Europe. A transnational perspective (Routledge, 2019).

The Real Academia de la Historia, is a part, along with the Academia de la Lengua y la de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, of the three oldest illustrated institutions in Spain. It was constituted in 1938 by a group of writers. Since the authorization of the king Felipe V in 1938, the Academia has enjoyed institutional ties like other corporations. Its work consists of contributing to the study and dissemination of the history of Spain. The Library, the Biographic Dictionary, the Antique Cabinet are his main departments.