Manuel Castells

Manuel Castells Oliván (kəsˈteʎs; born 9 February 1942) is a Spanish sociologist. He is well known for his authorship of a trilogy of works, entitled The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. He is a scholar of the information society, communication and globalization. Castells is the Full Professor of Sociology, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), in Barcelona. He is also the University Professor and the Wallis Annenberg Chair Professor of Communication Technology and Society at the Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Additionally, he is the Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Professor Emeritus of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught for 24 years. He is also a fellow of St. John's College at the University of Cambridge and holds the chair of Network Society at Collège d’Études Mondiales, Paris. The 2000–2014 research survey of the Social Sciences Citation Index ranks him as the world's fifth most-cited social science scholar, and the foremost-cited communication scholar. In 2012, Castells was awarded the Holberg Prize, for having "shaped our understanding of the political dynamics of urban and global economies in the network society." In 2013, he was awarded the Balzan Prize for Sociology for "his wide-ranging and imaginative thinking through of the implications of the great technological changes of our time." In January 2020, he was appointed Minister of Universities in the Sánchez II Government of Spain, position he held until his resignation in December 2021. Manuel Castells was born on February 9, 1942, in the city of Hellín, in La Mancha region, Spain. His parents, Fernando Castells Adriaensens and Josefina Olivan Escartin were both civil servants. He also has a younger sister named Irene. The family’s residence in La Mancha was short lived, as it was related to Castells’ parents’ work. In fact, due to the mobility of his father’s career as a finance inspector, Castells’ childhood was also mobile.