Space of Flows and Space of Places in Networked Social Movements

Manuel Castells, a leading expert worldwide in the social sciences, is professor emeritus of city and regional planning and of sociology at UC Berkeley, where he taught from 1979–2003. The Spanish sociologist is a prominent scholar and researcher in the fields of urban planning, communication, globalization and information society, and is currently university professor and the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Communication Technology and Society at the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles.

Among the foremost-cited scholars of communication and the social sciences, Castells has published 26 academic books and co-authored or edited 22 additional books, and has authored over 100 articles in academic journals. He has served as visiting professor at 17 universities and has lectured at over 300 academic and professional institutions in the U.S. and abroad. For his significant contributions to our understanding of the social sciences, Castells has received numerous honors including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Robert and Helen Lynd Award from the American Sociological Association, the C. Wright Mills Award from the American Society for the Study of Social Problems and the Ithiel de Sola Pool Award from the American Political Science Association. He was awarded the prestigious 2012 Holberg International Memorial Prize, a $775,000 accolade that recognizes his outstanding scholary work in social science.

From 2001–2012, Castells served as professor of sociology and director of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), Barcelona. Prior to his tenure at Berkeley, Castells taught as assistant professor and then associate professor of sociology at the University of Paris. He was professor and director of the Institute for Sociology of New Technologies at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, and is a fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, as well as director of research in the department of sociology at the University of Cambridge. Castells studied law and economics at the Universities of Barcelona and Paris, and holds doctorates in sociology and in human sciences from the University of Paris-Sorbonne.