David Cao Costoya holds a PhD in History and is Serra Húnter Professor (Tenure-elegible lecturer) at the University of Barcelona.

His lines of research focus on the study of sociability and local elites and powers in the contemporary period. His current research is particularly concerned with local identities and political cultures, with special attention to the Catalan case and the period between the middle decades of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century.

He is the author of Societat i sociabilitat. El Cercle Literari i els inicis de l’associacionisme recreatiu, cultural i polític a Vic (1848-1902) (Afers, 2015) and coauthor of Antoni Giberga i el liberalisme progressista a Barcelona durant la minoria d’edat d’Isabel II (Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2013). He has collaborated in several collective works, among them Anàlisi històrica de la identitat catalana (IEC, 2015) and Catalonia and Portugal. The Iberian Peninsula from the periphery (Peter Lang, 2015), both published in the framework of a European research project funded by the European Science Foundation.

He is a member of the editorial board of the journal Plecs d’Història Local and co-director of Ausa, editada por el Patronat d’Estudis Osonencs. Of this institution he has been secretary of studies (2010-2014), dean and vice-president (2014-2018), and director of the Modern and Contemporary History section (since 2018). He is also a numerary member of the Societat Verdaguer (since 2018).

In addition, he has been a teacher in secondary education (2014-2020) and a visiting professor at the Higher Institute for Religious Sciences of Vic (Faculty of Theology of Catalonia).