You can access the last version of this “About Me” document here
Right: this is not my résumé, but I think you all deserve some explanation on who’s maintaining this site and why.
My name is Ismael Peña-López and I am lecturer at the Open University of Catalonia, School of Law and Political Science, being in charge of the “area” of Public Policies for Development, with a special focus on ICT (so, ICT4D, digital divide and so). This site, that began as a blog (now I call it personal research portal), is intended to share with all of you the knowledge I might have gathered these last years and the thoughts this might have suggested.
My research interests can be written, more or less, this way:
- Digital Divide, e-Readiness, ICT4D
- ICTs in cooperation for development, nonprofit technology, online volunteering
- e-Inclusion, digital capacitation
- e-Learning, e-Portfolios
- Open Access, Open Science, Access to Knowledge
I teach and/or coordinate the following subjects:
- Digital Literacy and e-Inclusion [bibliography]
- Political Transformations in the Information Society I
- Political Transformations in the Information Society II
- Introduction to Economics
- Technological Grounds Of The e-Administration [bibliography]
Previous to this I was the founder and former Director of the Cooperation for Development Programme at the University. This is where the whole thing started and you can read About Me v1.0 to find out what were my main troubles there.
During those (almost) five years I was terribly seduced by Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) and little by little I started to shift to more academic issues: directing and giving courses, directing institutional technology transfer projects internationally, and some diffusion, innovation and research projects.
I’ve done speeches about these subjects and also written some articles I’ mostly have here (re)published (translated or in the original language) here. Feel free to browse the following categories:
- Articles
- Book Chapters
- Communications
- Conferences
- Learning Materials
- Online Articles
- Reports
- Seminars
- Working Papers
Other places where I usually write (frequency depending on medium):
- Comunicació 21 [Catalan], about the Information Society and its impact on mass media and communication in general.
- Otro Blog Más [Spanish], professor César Corcoles’s blog on the Internet, technology, multimedia, programming… and a lot of geek stuff
- Educación y Cultura [Spanish], about Technological Innovation and Social Transformation in e-Europe
I am also the manager and only developer of the free software project BibCiter, a PHP+MySQL based bibliographic manager.
I live near Barcelona, but I can usually be found here. I speak Catalan and Spanish (mother tongues — bilingual, yes), English, French, German (just a bit — ein bißchen Deutsch, my favourite answer when asked ;) and now I’m into had to leave Arabic because of the doctorate. I paraglide and play tenor sax – not at the same time (yet).
Of course, this blog expresses my opinion and not necessary my University’s.
Feel free to contact me by using this form.
