Invited talk at Mondragon University’s UniverCity Symposium around Welsh & Basque Cooperation on 14th December 2023

Thank to the grant funding achieved this year by the Learned Society of Wales to undertake '#Welsh & #Basque Cooperation' #ActionResearch project, this week I presented several preliminary findings and insights about it at Mondragon Unibertsitatea in #Bilbao. Against the backdrop of the #MoU signed between...

01 January, 2024 / 0 Comments

Article entitled ‘Pandemic Citizenship Amidst Stateless Algorithmic Nations: Digital Rights and Technological Sovereignty’ published through Coppieters Foundation

The article entitled ‘Pandemic Citizenship Amidst Stateless Algorithmic Nations: Digital Rights and Technological Sovereignty at Stake’ published via Coppieters Foundation in Open Access. This article introduces the term 'pandemic citizenship' to better understand the extreme circumsntances in which citizens have been surviving. To cite...

31 March, 2021 / 0 Comments

Invited Expert by the European Commission at the DigiTranScope Workshop ‘Connecting Policy Developers and Decision Makers With the DigiTranScope Experiments’ in Ispra (28-29/03/2019, Italy)

In late March 2019, Dr Calzada was kindly invited by the European Commission - JRC Centre for Advanced Studies to be speaker in the workshop DigiTranScope....

15 April, 2019 / 0 Comments

Speaker in the European Smart Projects Summit H2020-SCC in San Sebastian (26-27/03/2019, Spain)

Dr Igor Calzada participated as an expert in the round table about Data Governance by presenting some updates about his research on data commons....

15 April, 2019 / 0 Comments

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Igor Calzada PhD (Cum Laude), Fulbright SIR, MBA, BSc (Hons), & FeRSA

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Principal Research Fellow (Reader) in Digital Citizenship

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Dr Igor Calzada, MBA, FeRSA is Principal Research Fellow (Reader) intersecting digital, urban, and political transformations paying special attention to regional comparative studies from the social innovation perspective on (i) smart city citizenship, (ii) benchmarking city-regions, and (iii) digital rights/citizenships and data co-operatives.
2023: Awarded the Learned Society of Wales Award 2023 by organizing an Online Workshop.
2023: Principal Investigator (PI)/Research Fellow/Associate Professor at Ikerbasque & the University of the Basque Country.
2022: Awarded Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence 2022-2023 at California State University (USA).
2022: Promoted to Principal Research Fellow (Reader) position (from Research Fellow) at WISERD funded by the ESRC, Cardiff University.
2019-2021: Served as Senior Advisor to UN-Habitat in Digital Transformation for Urban Areas, People-Centered Smart Cities and worked at the DG Joint Research Centre, European Commission in Italy as Senior Scientist in Digital Transformations and AI.
2012-2021: Senior Researcher, Future of Cities/Urban Transformations ESRC Programmes, University of Oxford funded by EC-H2020, ESRC- Urban Transformations, EC-Marie Curie Regional Programmes, and the RSA.
2012-2014: Ikerbasque Fellow at the University of Oxford after being awarded his PhD Cum Laude in 2011 entitled 'Towards the Basque City-Region? Comparative Territorial Benchmarking' by Mondragon University and the University of Nevada, Reno - Centre for Basque Studies (USA).
With more than 20 years of research/policy experience as Senior Lecturer/Researcher in several universities in Europe and the USA: Oxford, Cardiff, Strathclyde, Aston, Vrije, Malmö, Iceland, Nevada, Bakersfield, Helsinki, Mondragon, Deusto, and the University of the Basque Country. Particularly during 2002-2012 in the Basque Country, he was the Director of the Basque Government and worked for this decade in the flagship industrial Basque hub called Mondragon Co-operative Corporation.

He is the author of the following recent monographs:
- Benchmarking City-Regions (Forthcoming, Routledge, 2024)
- Emerging Digital Citizenship Regimes: Postpandemic Technopolitical Democracies (Emerald, 2022)
- Smart City Citizenship (Elsevier, 2021)
- Postindependence (Translokal, 2014)
He is the co-author of the following books:
- The Smart City Transformations: The Revolution of the 21st Century (Bloomsbury, 2017)
- Political Innovation (Translokal, 2015)

His main research interest draws on how digital transformation processes driven by AI disruption in the post-GDPR current context are altering techno-political and democratic conditions of data governance for emerging digital citizenship regimes in the European (smart) city-regions by paying particular attention to the interplay of stakeholders in the creation of data co-operatives/platform co-operatives and in the claim of digital rights. Over the last years, since 2012, his main research focused on comparing processes in 'city-regions' and transitions in 'smart cities'. Currently, he is examining disruptive algorithmic technologies such as Blockchain, DAOs, data co-operatives, Metaverse, and ChatGPT, alongside his examination on digital citizenship and smart cities.

He is interested in examining/experimenting diverse, transitional, democratic, algorithmic, and innovative forms of emerging citizenship regimes from the Political Regionalism and the Changing Geographies of the State perspective in Europe and in the UK.

His track record of publications includes:
- 59 journal articles;
- 12 books;
- 25 book chapters;
- 28 policy reports;
- 161 international keynotes; and
- 33 media articles.

His work has been published in top academic journals (Q1) such as:
1. Globalizations,
2. Futures,
3. Journal of Urban Affairs,
4. Citizenship Studies,
5. Journal of Urban Technology,
6. Space and Polity,
7. Regional Studies Regional Science,
8. Regional Science Policy and Practice,
9. Transforming Government: People, Process, and Policy,
10. Palgrave Communications,
11. Sustainability,
12. Smart Cities,
13. Systems,
14. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research,
15. Political Insights,
16. Regions,
17. Debats,
18. JEMIE,
19. AEMI,
20. RIEV,
21. Grand Place,
22. Galde,
23. Jakin,
24. Bat,
25. among others

03 September, 2017 / 0 Comments

REPLICATE H2020 Smart Cities and Communities Lighthouse Project funded by the European Commission

REPLICATE, “Renaissance of PLaces with Innovative Citizenship And TEchnology”, is funded by a 29M grant from Horizon 2020, the main EU program fostering research and innovation actions. This project belongs to the “Lighthouse” call (Smart Cities and Communities solutions integrating energy, transport, ICT sectors...

17 February, 2016 / 0 Comments

‘7th Annual Smart Energy UK & EU Summit’ in London: Speaker & Moderator (29th Jan. 2016)

On 29th January 2016, Dr Calzada took part in the '7th Annual Smart Energy UK & Europe 2016 Summit' as moderator of the panel 'European Smart Cities, the Internet of Things (IoT) and the Connected Home' as well as delivering the conference 'Comparing EU Cities...

30 January, 2016 / 0 Comments

‘Smart Cities & Communities EU H2020’ Bitakora: Infoday by the European Commission in Brussels on 12th Feb 2015

Dr Igor Calzada attended the #H2020SCC infoday event organised by the European Commission. This is the photo & video bitakora of that day: In a nutshell, the event consisted of an intensive networking session but with a little focus on the policy orientation in favour of...

15 February, 2015 / 0 Comments

PostDoctoral project presentation > FlexibleCity International Symposium > Future Of Cities Programme > University of Oxford (UK)

The Oxford Future of Cities Programme organized the Flexible City International Symposium from 23rd to 25th October. I took part presenting a paper with my work-in-progress PostDoctoral Research project about The Future of City-Regions <> Comparative Territorial Benchmarking/Connections, specifically presenting the Basque & Oresund Connection...

21 October, 2014 / 0 Comments

Welcome to Dr. Igor Calzada