Team

Mayo Fuster Morell is the lead researcher of Dimmons Research Group of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute of the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). In addition, she is a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society – Harvard University and at the Government and Public Policies Institute (IGOP) of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).

She is the director of the Barcelona UOC Chair in digital economy: for a sharing economy focused on people’s welfare and the Right to the City gathering the Open University of Catalonia, the Barcelona City Council and Barcelona Activa.

She is the UOC’s lead researcher of the European projects PLUS: Platform Labor in Urban Spaces. She also was the lead researcher of the european project DECODE Citizens Owned Data Ecosystem and at the IGOP’s European Project: P2Pvalue: Techno-social platform for sustainable models and value generation in commons-based peer production in the Future Internet.

In 2010, she concluded her PhD thesis at the European University Institute in Florence on the governance of common-based peer production, and has numerous publications in the field.

@lilaroja //  mfuster [at] uoc.edu // Publications // Website

Ricard Espelt is a senior researcher specializing in social and solidarity economy studies and the digital sphere.

He is an interdisciplinary researcher and academic with expertise in action research across the social sciences, humanities, and digital domains. Dr. Espelt holds a Doctorate in Information Society and Knowledge, as well as an Industrial Doctorate in social sciences and humanities. His academic background is diverse, including a degree in Fine Arts. Currently, he serves as a Senior Researcher at Dimmons, located at the IN3 (UOC), and is a visiting researcher at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG) in Berlin.

He is responsible for the MatchImpulsa project, which is associated with the Open_Chair initiative, promoted by Dimmons (UOC), Barcelona City Council, and Barcelona Activa local economic agency. His research contributions are extensive, with numerous publications in high-impact journals, conference proceedings, book chapters, and action-research books. He has also actively engaged in teaching and supervision, holding positions at different educational levels and contributing to various academic programs and institutions.

@ricardespelt // Personal research website // ricardespelt [at] uoc.edu // Publications

Enric Senabre Hidalgo, researcher in co-creation methodologies

Enric is a postdoctoral research fellow at UOC. His work at Dimmons connects collaborative research practices with ethnography, community-based science and participatory design. He’s also a member of the Peer-Produced Research Lab (U1284 INSERM – Université Paris Cité) led by Bastian Greshake Tzovaras, dedicated to the implementation of commons-based peer production in citizen science and personal science.

President of the Platoniq Foundation and co-founder of the open source Goteo.org platform for civic crowdfunding. PhD in Sociology on the Information and Knowledge Society from the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute under the direction of Mayo Fuster Morell. Previously postdoctoral researcher at the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities (Austrian Academy of Sciences), research fellow at CECAN (University of Surrey), vice-president of the Observatory for CyberSociety and associate professor of software studies at the UOC’s Faculty of Computer Science and Multimedia. Certified Scrum Master by the Scrum Alliance, co-creation facilitator in international projects like Europeana Creative or the Connected Action for the Commons network of the European Cultural Foundation.

Personal website // esenabre [at] uoc.edu

Adrià Garcia i Mateu  PhD candidate on design for policy making. Founding member of Holon & focused on transition design & housing cooperatives.

He is a founding member of Holon, a design collective working to mainstream organisations leading the transition towards a planetary society. He’s currently also teaching transition design at several design schools, and facilitating a local network of social impact design schools too. Finally he is part of la borda de Can Batlló, Barcelona, one of the few local urban housing cooperative of shared ownership. He holds a MSc in Leadership towards Sustainability from Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden, and a degree in Design, specialising in service system design for sustainability by Eina School of Design and Art of Barcelona, Catalonia.

@adriagm // agarciamateu [at] uoc.edu

Anna Cigarini is PhD candidate on citizen science and public policy. My research focuses on citizen sensing and digital technologies, and the role they play in configuring scientific practices and policy making  in population health science. She is also a member of OpenSystems, of Universitat de Barcelona Institute of Complex Systems, and of Complexity Lab Barcelona. She is currently part of the European Horizon2020 project “CoAct, Codesigning Citizen Social Science for Collective Action”. She holds a master’s degree in Sociology and Demography at University Pompeu Fabra, a master’s degree in Population Studies at University of Groningen and a bachelor’s degree in Statistics at University Milano-Bicocca.

@anna_cigarini // annacigarini@uoc.edu

Marc Rocas Royo is currently Associate Professor in Strategic Management at University of Barcelona, and Study Abroad Program’s Professor at Fundació Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His current research interests are the Sharing Economy, the Blockchain, and their related systems of governance. He has previously researched about Cultural Intelligence and Cross-Cultural Management, fields in which he has recently published a book chapter about Cultural Intelligence and Creativity. He also works as freelance management consultant specialized in Diversity Management. He previously worked as Country Manager for a Swedish startup. He holds a Master’s Degree in the Information and Knowledge Society and a Telecommunications Engineer’s Degree, among others. He always tries to combine the technical, social and business perspectives for approaching his fields of research from enriched points of view.

@marcrocas // Personal website // mrocas [at] uoc.edu

Melissa Renau  PhD candidate studying how social and technological innovation can contribute to lessen socioeconomic inequalities.

She is currently developing her PhD thesis in Dimmons as part of the European project “Platform Labour in Urban Spaces”.  Her main research interest is to study the platforms socio-technical systems in order to understand how both workplace flexibility and better working conditions for platform workers can be enhanced. She holds a master’s degree on Sociology at the University of Barcelona and bachelor’s degree in Business Administration at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Her final degree thesis “Social Blockchain Revolution” was awarded the first position in Aracoop 2017 prizes. She truly believes that social science research can have social impact on society and wants to contribute to this end.

@melissa_renau //  Linkedin //  melissareca95 [at] gmail.com 

Nuria Vega PhP candidate in Gender Studies, Digitalization, and Social Economy at the Open University of Catalonia.

Graduate in journalism and sociology, she  worked in innovation & communication consultancy until 2017. From then, she has been involved in several agroecological and Social and Solidarity Economy projects based in Barcelona city, promoted by Opcions, Food Coop Barcelona and Goteo.

She has also collaborated as a researcher assistant in the investigation «Agroecology platform cooperative consumption. The role of Information and Communications Technology in the agroecological cooperative consumption» led by Ricard Espelt. After that, she co-founded (des)vestint aliments, an art and pedagogic project which focus on rethinking our relationship with food. In addition, she co-edited “Cooperativisme i agroecologia a Barcelona. 25 anys: 1993-2018”, an essay published by Comanegra that studied the evolution of agroecology cooperative movement in the city. Last but not least, she is part of Borronets, a food consumer cooperative of Sant Andreu neighbourhood in Barcelona.

@nuriavega // website // LinkedIn //  nvegaro [at] uoc.edu

Sara Moreira  PhD candidate on communication strategies and tools for the commons in Portugal & Catalonia.

Her research focuses on the communicative ecologies of commons-oriented organizations and alternative economies in Portugal and Catalonia, and is hosted by the Dimmons research group and the Institute of Sociology of the University of Porto, and funded by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT). She holds a Master of Science in Computing and Informatics Engineering from the University of Porto and has previously worked as an editor, data-journalist, projects manager, webdeveloper – among other training and consultancy roles in Portugal, East Timor, Mozambique, and globally. She is an active commoner within grassroots initiatives in Porto dedicated to agroecology, collaborative consumption, and community media.

@saritamoreira // comcom.saritamoreira.com // saritamoreira [at] uoc.edu

Vera Vidal  PhD candidate on sharing cities & Barcelona. Collaborator in projects as OuiShare Paris. Her research is funded by AGAUR, through the European Social Fund.

Vera Vidal studies the field of sharing cities, focusing on Barcelona. Previously, she worked for OuiShare Paris on the Sharitories study, on sharing practices in mid-sized cities across Europe, and was the scientific coordinator of the Global Cities chair, directed by Saskia Sassen and Richard Sennett, at FMSH. She holds a Masters in Management from Audencia School of Management, and a Masters in Social Sciences from EHESS.

@vvidalbeneyto // veravidal [at] uoc.edu

Sergi Frías Hernández is the director of Coboi lab, a public social innovation laboratory at Sant Boi de Llobregat. He is a PhD candidate at Dimmons, researching which ecosystemic conditions are necessary and / or favorable for a local public social innovation lab to develop its activity and be sustainable over time. Previously, he has worked as a consultant and researcher at different public and private organizations as: Generalitat of Catalonia – Cultural Dept. Office, Catalan Institute of Cultural Industries (ICIC; today called ICEC), D’Apeph or McKinsey. Also, he has been involved in artistic collectives as Parashuts Studio or Thinkbiosis specialized in media projects as a film director in different multidisciplinar artistic projects. Nowadays, he is lecturing Tools for Cultural Change at Istituto Europeo di Design- IED for Visual Communication Degree students and he is opening new academic collaborations with ELISAVA- Barcelona School of Design and Engineering (Design for City Making project – DxCM, lead by Ezio Manzini), Tecnocampus- UPF Foundation, Open University of Catalonia- UOC and European School for Social Innovation- ESSI. Sergi Frías is a Political Scientist (UPF); postgraduate in International Economy Relationships (UB), Filmmaking (URLL) and Contents Creation for New Audiovisual Media (UOC) and specialized in Social Entrepreneurship by Copenhagen Business School (CBS) and Social Innovation Ecosystems.

@s_frias // LinkedIn // sfrias [at] santboi.cat

Guido Smorto is Full Professor of Law at University of Palermo (Italy) and Faculty affiliate at Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) – Open University of Catalonia, where he works as Member of Dimmons (Digital Commons) providing his expertise on the regulation of sharing economy. As International Visiting Professor he taught several times in U.S.A. (Fordham School of Law) and Japan (Nagoya University) and was “Professore Visitante” in Brazil (Università Oeste de Santa Catarina). His latest articles focus on the regulation of the platform economy, with a special focus on EU law and on its impact on cities. On these topics, beside scholarly works and non academic articles, he published a Report on behalf of EU Commission, a Research paper for the EU Parliament, and contributed as an expert to the 2017 European Parliament Resolution on the collaborative economy.

Academia // gsmorto [at] uoc.edu

Mara Balestrini is a Human Computer Interaction (HCI) researcher and a technology strategist. She is the CEO of Ideas for Change, a think tank advising cities, businesses and institutions on impact innovation. Mara’s work sits at the intersection of civic technology, data, co-creation and Action Research. She has authored over 20 publications on these subjects and coordinated projects such as Making Sense EU, Bristol Approach and #DataFutures. Mara is also a co-founder of SalusCoop, the first Spanish cooperative for citizens’ health data. Mara earned a PhD in Computer Science from the Intel Collaborative Research Institute on Sustainable Connected Cities (ICRI-Cities) at University College London (UCL). She also holds a BA in Audiovisual Communications and a MSc in Cognitive Systems and Interactive Media. She is Senior Faculty at the IAAC and a visiting lecturer at the the Royal College of Art (RCA). Her work has been awarded at ACM CHI, ACM CSCW, Ars Electronica, among others, and featured in international media such as the BBC, The Guardian, The Financial Times and El País.

@marabales // marabalestrini [at] ideasforchange.com

Monica Bernardi is an urban sociologist, Ph.D. in Information Society, Research Fellow at the Milano-Bicocca University, Department of Sociology and Social Research. Her main research focus are smart city, sharing city, social innovation, sharing economy and the governance models that favor the creation of a sharing ecosystem in the urban tissue, with a special focus on the role of the public administration. During the Ph.D. she deepened the topic of the sharing economy investigating its evolution and features, and she studied the governance model implemented in the creation of a sharing city, analyzing the case of Milan and Seoul. Freelancer editor for LabGov/Urban Media Lab on the topic of the sharing economy; member of the “Register of Experts and Operators of the Sharing Economy in Milan”, Municipality of Milan, Milan Sharing City Project; member of the association “MilanoIN. Innovare X Includere”, laboratory of public policies.

@MonyBernardi

Monica Grau  PhD. Focus on feminist economy. Studying the interplay of feminist economics with the digital economy.

She has international experience in the fields of gender equality, women’s economic empowerment and sustainable development. She also has expertise in research disciplines: social psychology, management & entrepreneurship, feminist theory, and feminist economy. Monica Grau holds a PhD. in Philosophy (University of Barcelona), a M.Sc. in Human Resource Development (IDPM, UK) and a Degree in Psychology (Valencia University, Spain, and Montpellier University, France).

Previously she has worked as the coordinator of Women Innovators for Social Business in Europe Project (WISE), for which she was accountable for developing capacity building on women’s social entrepreneurship in Southern of Europe (Spain, Greece and Croatia). She has also been advisory group member for WeStart Project. Mapping Women Social Entrepreneurship in Europe.

@monicagrau // mgrausar@uoc.edu

Núria Reguero Jiménez is a journalist and Dimmons researcher specialized in culture/communication policies, commons and social movements. In her PhD (2017) she analyzed community media’s governance and collective action (it was supervised by Mayo Fuster and Joan Subirats). She’s currently working at Escola de l’IGOP and is member of the Xarxa d’Economia Solidària. She was board member of the Community Media Forum Europe (2008-2011) and coordinator of the Unesco Chair in Communication InCom-UAB (2006-2014). She is also involved in grassroots initiatives on agroecology, collaborative consumption, and coops.

Academia // @__serendipia__

Thais Ruiz de Alda is a seasoned technologist with over 20 years of experience, currently serving as the Executive Director of DigitalFems. She’s a dedicated advocate for gender equality in tech, coordinating the gender-focused data lab, GenderDataLab.org.

Ruiz de Alda also mentors digital innovation projects and collaborates with the Open University of Catalonia. She has founded organizations focused on digital privacy and security, and has co-organized significant digital economy events. Her work intersects technology, politics, and gender, making her a key figure in the digital sector.

digital fems