Manuel Castells is Professor at the Open University of Catalonia, University Professor and Wallis Annenberg Chair in Communication Technology and Society at the University of Southern California, and Emeritus Professor at the University of California-Berkeley.
He has authored 35 books on the sociology of the Internet, political economy, urban sociology, regional development and social movements, many of them translated into several languages. He is Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, and a Fellow of the Spanish Royal Academy of Economics. He was a founding Board member of the European Research Council and of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology.
Manuel Castells has received the Erasmus Medal of Science from the Academia Europaea, the Holberg Memorial Prize from the Norwegian Parliament, and the Balzan Prize. In 2020 he was appointed Minister of Universities of the Spanish Government