Professor Carlos C. Contreras-Ibáñez, is a researcher in Social Psychology, associated with the Department of Sociology at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM) Iztapalapa Campus since 1997.

After completing his undergraduate studies at UAM Iztapalapa Campus (Social Psychology, 1993), he studied for a Master's degree at UAM and Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich (History and Philosophy of Science, 2000) and obtained his Ph.D. degree from the Faculty of Psychology of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) (Social Psychology, 2009), with the dissertation "Evolution of Intergroup Cooperation: Structural, Cultural and Social Cognitive Mechanisms".
His research interests fall into three major related categories: 1. Psychosocial processes: Culture, cognition, and social change, 2. Intergroup relations, conflict, cooperation, and identity, and 3. Theory, methods, and intervention for social change in health/wellbeing, community participation, and collective action.

He has published six books, 45 book chapters, and refereed articles and has presented more than 140 oral communications at national and international conferences. He has directed more than 80 theses (undergraduate and graduate). He has taught more than 130 courses in 4 national and two international universities, generally in three areas: socio-cognitive principles, psychosocial theories, and quantitative methods in social sciences. In addition to his regular teaching load in Social Psychology in recent years, he previously taught courses in Social Network Analysis, a Master's course in Intercultural Conflict at the Alice Salomon Hochschule (ASU) in Berlin, as Master's and Ph.D. courses in Economics at the UAM Xochimilco Campus, and as a mixed methods course in the Master's and Ph.D. Program at the Centro de Estudios Sociológicos del Colegio de México.

He has participated as a guest speaker in different academic events, some requested and financed by the Mexican Academy of Science and others by the receiving institutions. He has been a member of various national and inter-American scientific societies in psychology and social psychology, the International Network for Social Network Analysis, and the Society for Social Neuroscience. He has directed or participated in 17 research and evaluation projects funded nationally or internationally. He has managed the visit or stay of colleagues, including two postdoctoral fellows, and organized international academic events.

He coordinated the Divisional Laboratory of Social Cognition at UAM Iztapalapa Campus. He has participated in several editorial committees and peer review committees of proposals for universities and institutional committees. He is a member of editorial boards of national and international journals and magazines in his field. His laboratory has received two postdoctoral collaborators.

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, he is executing with an interdisciplinary group the action-research project "Well-being and health in university communities: epidemiology and social intervention", for which workshops, biomedical and psychometric instruments, and materials were developed under a systematic and complex design. This project is not only unique in its kind in Mexico, but it also puts relational wellbeing, and not only physical health, at the forefront of systematic intervention, and thus this group will establish recommendations for the safe return to university facilities of the community as a whole.