Organization and governing bodies

Rectora Imma Tubella

Dra. Imma Tubella i Casadevall

President of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya since December 2005 until April 2013, Chair in Communication at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, she has a PhD in Social Sciences, with a thesis entitled Comunicació i identitat. El cas de Televisió de Catalunya (Communication and Identity. The Case of Televisió de Catalunya), and is Professor of Communications in the University's Audiovisual Communications Faculty.

She has been Vice-President of the Institute of Catalan Studies' Catalan Communications Society (1995-2003), Vice-President of Research and Co-director of the PhD programme at the UOC (1999-2003), Vice-President of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute –IN3– (1998-2003), member of the Advisory Board on Telecommunications and the Information Society to the Catalan government's Department for Universities, Research and the Information Society (1998-2003) and President of the Catalan Summer University Foundation (2006-2007). She held the position of Director of Studies and Contents at the Catalan Radio and Television Corporation (1995-2002) and Ombudsman at El Punt (2004).

In the field of teaching, she has been Professor of Audiovisual System Structure at Barcelona Autonomous University (1995-1998), and Professor of Communication Theory at Ramon Llull University (1998-2003).

She has also been a member of the Board of Administration of the Catalan Radio and Television Corporation (2000-2004), member of the European Board of the European Association of Regional Television –CIRCOM Regional– (1988-1998) and member of the Council of the University of Perpignan's Cross-border French-Catalan Institute (since 2000).

Currently, she is a member, among others, of the Catalan Advisory Board to Telefónica; the FUNDACC Foundation, the Communications and Culture Barometer, and the Board of Trustees of Pompeu Fabra University's Barcelona Media Foundation. She is also on the jury for Catalonia's National Radio and TV Awards and the RAC (Catalan Radio Association) Awards.

While never abandoning her research work into communication and identity,  she co-led, alongside Dr Manuel Castells, the Project Internet Catalonia research programme which included 10 projects and the collaboration of 66 researchers. As part of the programme, she co-led research into the network society in Catalonia and led the research project entitled Communication and Social Change in the Information Society: the Internet in the Audiovisual Context of Catalonia.

She has published numerous books and articles, of which the following stand out: Las formas de consumo de la televisión como generadora de identidad (Forms of Consumption of Television as Generators of Identity), Fundación General de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1998; La Societat Xarxa a Catalunya (The Network Society in Catalonia), with M. Castells, et al., Rosa dels Vents. Barcelona, 2003; La transició a la Societat Xarxa (The Transition to the Network Society), with M. Castells, et al., Ariel, 2007, and Televisió i Internet: la guerra de les pantalles (Television and Internet: Screen Wars), in collaboration with C. Tabernero and V. Dwyer, Ariel, 2007.