After his PhD at Imperial College London, Miguel worked at Manchester University, Centre for the History of Science, and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Department of Science, Technology and Society. His research interests are in the history of contemporary biomedicine, with special emphasis on the transition between molecular biology and new forms of knowledge production at the end of the 20th century:  biotechnology, bioinformatics and genomics. He is now a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation Studies of the University of Edinburgh.

His most recent research focuses on the use of DNA ancestry searches by now-adult children and biological families that seek reunion and cannot trace their filiation via the official paper trail. Their use of genetic technologies is triggered by knowledge or suspicion that the gaps, inaccuracies or lack of access to official documents (birth certificates, adoption records or medical reports) conceal lack of full, free consent at the time the minors were separated from their birth families. He has investigated and published a book chapter on families that denounce having been coercively severed during the dictatorship of General Franco and first decades of democracy in Spain. Other countries – some of them culturally similar to Spain and some different – are reckoning with similar practices. This suggests that child removal may be a global phenomenon with different national incarnations.

Prior to this, he focused on the history of concerted DNA mapping and sequencing initiatives, with special attention to the human and other large-scale genome projects that proliferated in the 1980s and 90s. This work was conducted within a 5-year project entitled Medical Translation in the History of Modern Genomics, with funding from the European Research Council. As a result of it, he coauthored a research monograph entitled A History of Genomics across Species, Communities and Projects (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) and co-edited a special journal issue on the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods in history of science (Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, 52, issue 3, 2022).

He has also explored the emergence of agricultural biotechnology and the cloning of Dolly the sheep. His earlier book Biology, Computing and the History of Molecular Sequencing: From Proteins to DNA was published by Palgrave-Macmillan in 2012 (paperback edition in 2015). He previously worked as a journalist and is interested in science communication and public engagement.