Accepted at the Graduate School of the University of Columbia in New York City, he studied with Arno Mayer and Robert O. Paxton (with whom he worked briefly as "research assistant ").

As Spanish legislation required citizenship for tenure status, Ucelay-Da Cal somewhat disingenuously maintained his situation as professor by obtaining a degree in Contemporary (i.e. Modern) History at the University of Barcelona in 1980 and, in 1983, a doctorate in history at the UAB with a new thesis, written in Catalan, re-researched and with a slight change of temporal focus, El nacionalisme radical català i la resistència a la Dictadura de Primo de Rivera, 1923-1931, directed by Josep Fontana.

From 2009 to 2013 he participated in the Advanced Grant Project from the European Research Council (ERC) State Building in Latin America, at the UPF.

[3] Although he has not been particularly active in teaching abroad, he was “visiting professor " at Duke University between February and April 1994, taught also at Venice International University (Italy) in the spring semester of 2002, and received as " visiting scholar " at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (École des Hautes Etudes de Sciences Sociales) in Paris in April 2004.

He directed the dissertations of historians, some whom have since gone on to very distinguished investigatory careers: as examples, one can cite Xavier Casals, who has become unquestionably the major specialist in Neo-Nazism in Spain; David Martinez Fiol, who pioneered research on the impact of the First World War in Catalonia; Joan Maria Thomàs, a top specialist on the Spanish Falange movement; and Joan Esculies, a rising figure among scholars of Catalan nationalism; among others.

Enric Ucelay-Da Cal has published over two hundred articles in academic journals and other history serial publications, as well as in books in Spanish, Catalan, English, French, and Italian.