Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Assistant professor of political science at the Univesity of Barcelona.

EDUCATION
  • 2009 PhD with "European Doctorate" mention in Political Science at the University of Barcelona (UB). Dissertation: Models of Decision-Making: Facing Uncertainty in Spanish Judicial Settings (download pdf version)
  • From September 2004 up to now: Enrolled in a PhD in Cognitive Sciences and Linguistics at the AUTONOMOUS UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA.
  • From September 1996 to September 2000: Graduate in Political Science by the AUTONOMOUS UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA.

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE 

Skills

Political scientist with a strong background in data analysis and the empirical approach to the analysis of institutions, governance, and political behavior. Hands-on experience (research and teaching) with applied statistical methods to both survey and textual data. Techniques include, for example, multivariate non-linear regression models with discrete choice-based response (e.g., logistic regression, probit); linear models (e.g. OLS) for continuous or quasi-continuous response data; and exploratory tools such as Multidimensional Scaling (MDS), Correspondence Analysis (MCA), Clustering methods (HAC), and Principal Components Analysis (PCA), applied to handle and visualize multidimensional data into a lower dimensional space.

My tool of choice is the statistical programming language R (within the free software text editor Emacs) for survey data loading and munging, statistical analysis, high-quality visualization, and report generation with LaTeX, OpenOffice, MS Word, or HTML. Working knowledge of SPSS, GNU PSPP, etc.

Fields

Political behavior; decision-making in institutional frameworks (e.g., in the judicial domain);
urban and metropolitan governance; political economy; quantitative text analysis for policy analysis; design, implementation, and empirical evaluation of indicators for measuring components of political and legal systems (e.g., judicial decentralization, access and costs to legal information); measuring the quality of public institutions (comparative governance); data science; data visualization; multilevel governance; political sociology.


WORK HISTORY

  • POST-DOC RESERCHER (15/03/2014-30/04/2015) at the Instituut voor Informatierecht (IViR), Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA), Faculty of Law (Netherlands)

    • VISITING RESEARCHER (Sept 2013–Jan 2014): Visiting researcher at the Chair of Multilevel Governance, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Department of Political Science (Netherlands).
    • ASSISTANT PROFESSOR (2010- ) of Political Science at the Political Science Department of the UB.
    • ASSISTANT LECTURER (2005 - September 2010) at the Political Science Department of the UNIVERSITAT DE BARCELONA (UB). Lecturer of Comparative Politics, Political Theory, and Research Methods.
    • RESEARCHER at the Institute for Law and Technology (IDT), since January 2003, participant in several national-funded research projects on the organisation of the judiciary (IURISERVICE) and access multimedia judicial content (E-Sentencias). Also participant in European-funded projects on Drafting Legislation with Ontology-Based Support (DALOS), from the e-Participation call, and in the VI Framework 2004-2006 project Semantically Enabled Knowledge Technologies (SEKT). Lines of investigation: organizational decision-making, institutionally unstructured behaviour, knowledge representation, decision-support systems, semantic web, artificial intelligence, etc.
    • August 2002-Up to now: FREELANCE TRANSLATOR AND EDITOR (Catalan, Spanish, English). Recently translated from English to Spanish, John Colville, The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries 1939-1955. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004.
    • June 2007-July 2007: invited RESEARCHER at Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research, Stanford University (Dr. Mark Musen), funded with doctoral visiting research grant by AGAUR (2006-BE2-10242).
    • September 2002-August 2005: Researcher and editor at the Carles Pi i Sunyer Foundation.

    PARTICIPATION IN FUNDED RESEARCH
    • Una nueva arquitectura local: eficiencia, dimensión y democracia. CSO2013-48641-C2-2-R. MCOC-Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. 2014-2016. PI: Jaume Magre Ferran.
    • Copyright in an Age of Access: Alternatives to Copyright Enforcement. Universiteit van Amsterdam (IViR). The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). 2012-2015. PI: P. B. Hugenholtz.
    • e-Access to Legal Information Indicators. Design and pilot implementation of indicators for measuring legal and regulatory information discovery costs. World Bank. 2012-14. PI
    • Between functional autonomy and jurisdictional dependence. Judicial power in Catalonia from a comparative perspective. Funding agency: Centre d’Estudis Jurídics—Generalitat de Catalunya. 2012-13. PI
    • integra. Research in Technologies for Migration Management. Consortium: GMV, Amper, Boeing, Isdefe, Telvent, and 20+ research teams.Funding agency: Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism, and Commerce. CENIT-2008-1018. 2008–2011.
    • ontomedia. Semantically-enabled platform for online mediation. Funding agency: Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism, and Commerce. TSI-020501-2008-131/CSO-2008-05536-SOCI (AVANZA I+D 2008). 2008–2010. 
    • E-Sentencias: Hardware-software platform to improve generation and management of knowledge and images for justice. Funder: Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism, and Commerce (PROFIT), coordinator: Dr. P. Casanovas. 
    • Drafting Legislation with Ontology-based Support (DALOS). Funder: European Commission (E-Participation call). Dates: 2007-2008 (18 months). Coordinator: Dr. D. Tiscornia, ITTIG. 
    • OCJ. Observatory of Judicial Culture. Implementation of IURISERVICE. Funder: Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (SEJ2006-10695). PI: Dr. P. Casanovas. 
    • Semantically Enabled Knowledge Technologies. Funder: European Union (VI Program) EU-IST 2003-506826 SEKT. Dates: 01-01-2004 / 31-12-2006. PI: Dr. John Davies (British Telecom); PI from UAB: Dr. P. Casanovas. 
    • Ethical, social and legal perspectives of converging technologies (NBIC). Funder: Spanish Ministry of Science and Education (MEC). Dates: November 2005-December 2006. PI: Dr. P. Casanovas. 
    • LEFIS-APTICE. Legal Framework for the Information Society II. Socrates Programme. Erasmus Thematic Network. 225990-CP-1-2005-1-ES-ERASMUS-TN. Durada: October 2005 / September 2007. IP: F. Galindo (Universidad de Zaragoza). IP IDT: P. Casanovas.
 
    • OCJ. Observatory of Judicial Culture. Study of quantitative and qualitative data to construct a decision-support system for Spanish judges in their first appointment. Funder: Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (SEC2001-2581-C02-01). PI: Dr. P. Casanovas.

     PUBLICATIONS

      2015-2016

    • Vallbé, J.-J.; Magre, J.; Tomàs, M. (2015): Being Metropolitan: the Effects of Individual and Contextual Factors on Shaping Metropolitan Identity. Journal of Urban Affairs [“Citizens in City-Regions” special issue, DOI: 10.1111/juaf.12243]. IF: 1.298 (SSCI), Q1.
    • Magre, J.; Vallbé, J.-J.; Tomàs, M. (2016): Moving to Suburbia? Effects of Residential Mobility on Community Engagement. Urban Studies 53(1): 17-39. IF (SSCI): 1.33, Q1.
    • Going means trouble and staying makes it double: the value of licensing recorded music online. Journal of Cultural Economics [doi 10.1007/s10824-015-9251-8]. IF (SSCI): 1.741, Q1 (Economics). 
    • Vallbé, J.-J.; Casellas, N. (2015): Access to regulations and the quality of the regulatory environment: theoretical and empirical assessment. [Under review]

    2013-2014

    • Vallbé, J.-J. (2014): Frameworks for Modeling Political Cognition and Decisions in Institutional Environments. Springer-Verlag. [Book website] [Open online code and data repository]
    • Vallbé, J.-J. (2014) Measuring the Judicial Power of Regions. A Judicial Regional Authority Index. [Under review]
    • Falcó-Gimeno, A.; Vallbé, J.-J. (2014): Defending the Coalition Agreement in Parliament. [Under review] 
    • Vallbé, J.-J.; Casellas, N. (2014): “What’s the Cost of e-Access to Legal Information? A com-posite indicator”. Doing Business Research Conference: Past, Present, and Future of Business Regulation. Washington, DC: World Bank. [Download]

    2012
    • Vallbé, J.-J.; Casellas, N. (2012): Raising Voice or Effectiveness? The Role of e-Government on the Quality of Political Institutions. Proceedings of ECEG 2012: the 12th European Conference in e-Government. Barcelona.
    • Vallbé, J.-J. (2012): Autonomía y organización en el sistema judicial español. In J.M. Reniu (coord.): Sistema político español. Barcelona: Huygens.
    • Casellas, N.; Vallbé, J.J. (2012). Legal Information and Linked Open Legal Data. In X. Serra, Actes del II Congrés Català de Filosofia, Publicacions de la Universitat de València.
    • Vallbé, J.-J., Fernández-Barrera, M., Casellas, N. (eds.)(2012): Lecturas sobre derecho y Web Semántica. Aplicaciones y ontologías jurídicas para la nueva generación de la red. La Razón Áurea Series. Granada (Spain): Ed. Comares.


    2011
    • Casellas, N.; Vallbé, J.-J.; Bruce, Th. R. From Legal Information to Open Legal Data: A Case Study in U.S. Federal Legal Information. OGK 2011: The AAAI Fall Symposium on Open Government Knowledge: AI Opportunities and Challenges.4-6 November 2011, Arlington, Virginia, USA.
    • Casellas, N.; Vallbé, J.-J.; Bruce, Th. R. (2011): Analyis of Indexing Terms for Legal Thesauri Reuse: An Experiment with the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations. Applying Human Language Technology to the Law. Workshop at ICAIL 2011: Thirteenth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law. Pittsburgh (MA): June 10, 2011.
    • Poblet, M.; Vallbé, J.-J. (2011): Children Immigration in the Catalan Parliamentary Debate: The Empty Set. Culture, Language, and Representation 9: 135-171.


    2010
    • Vallbé, J.-J., Fernández-Barrera, M., Casellas, N. (eds.)(2010): Web Semántica y ontologías jurídicas. Aplicaciones para el derecho en la nueva generación de la red. La Razón Áurea Series. Granada (Spain): Ed. Comares [forthcoming].
    • Vallbé, J.-J., Casellas, N., Casanovas, P., López-Cobo, J.-M. (2010): "A decision-support system to manage legal organizational memories". SubTech 2010. 11th International Conference on Substantive Technology in Legal Education and Practice. University of Zaragoza - 1st to 3rd July 2010.

    2009 and earlier
    • Casanovas, P.; Casellas, N., Vallbé, J.J., Poblet, M., Contreras, J., Blázquez, M., Benjamins, R.V. (2009): "Semantic Technology for Professional Judicial Knowledge”. In Davies, J. Grobelnik, M., Mladenic, D. (Eds.): Semantic Web: Integrating Ontology Management, Knowledge Discovery and Human Language Technologies. Springer Verlag.
    • Bösser, T.; Casellas, N.; Melchior, E.-M.; Thurlow, I.; Vallbé, J.-J. (2009): "User quality and business benefit of semantic knowledge management applications". In Davies, J. Grobelnik, M., Mladenic, D. (Eds.): Semantic Web: Integrating Ontology Management, Knowledge Discovery and Human Language Technologies. Springer Verlag, 2009.
    • P. Casanovas, N. Casellas, J.J. Vallbé (2009): “An ontology-based decision support system for judges”. In J. Breuker, P. Casanovas, M. Klein and E. Francesconi (eds.). Law, Ontologies and the Semantic Web: Channelling the Legal Information Flood. Volume 188, Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications Series. Amsterdam (The Netherlands): IOS Press, 2009, pp. 165-176.
    • Casanovas, P.; Casellas, N.; Vallbé, J.-J.; Poblet, M. Ramos, F.; Gorroñogoitia, J.; Contreras, J.; Blázquez, M.; Benjamins, V.R. (2009): “IURISERVICE II. Desarrollo de la ontología y diseño de la arquitectura”. Casanovas, P.; Benjamins, V.R.; Vallbé, J.J.; Fernández-Barrera, M. (Eds.): Web semántica y ontologías jurídicas. Aplicaciones para el derecho en la nueva generación de la red. La Razón Áurea Series. Granada (Spain): Ed. Comares [forthcoming].

    • Poblet, M; Vallbé, J.J.; Casellas, N.; Casanovas, P. (2008): "Judges as IT users: The Iuriservice example", in A. Cerrillo and P. Fabra (Eds.): E-Justice: Using Information Communication Technologies in The Court System. Hershey (PA) and New York (NY): IGI Books, 2008, pp. 38-56.

    • Vallbé, J.J., Martí, A., Jakulin, A., Fortuna, B., Mladenic, D., and Casanovas, P. (2007): "Stemming and Lemmatization: improving knowledge management through language processing techniques". Casanovas, P., Noriega, P., Bourcier, D., Galindo, F. (Eds.).Trends in Legal Knowledge, the Semantic Web and the Regulation of Electronic Social Systems. Florence (Italy): European Press Academic Publishing, 2007, pp. 227-242.
    • Casellas, N., Casanovas, P., Vallbé, J.-J., Poblet, M., et al. “Semantic Enhancement for Legal Information Retrieval: Iuriservice Performance”. In Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (ICAIL2007), June 4-8, 2007, Stanford Law School, Palo Alto, ACM, 2007, pp. 49-57
    • Vallbé, J.J. (2007): "Herbert A. Simon: un projecte sòlid per a les ciències socials" [Herbert A. Simon: A Solid Project for Social Sciences]. In J. Montserrat, and I. Roviró (eds.). L'economia. Col•loquis de Vic. Barcelona: Institut d'Estudis Catalans, Societat Catalana de Filosofia, 2007.
    • Bösser, T.; Casanovas, P.; Casellas, N.; Melchior, E.-M.; Thurlow, I.; Vallbé, J.-J. (2007): D8.4.1 Results of User Tests and Completed Use Case Studies. Technical Report. EU-IST Project IST-2003-506826 SEKT.
    • Monton, M., Carrabina, J., Montero, C., Serrano, J., Binefa, X., Garcia, C., Blázquez, M., Contreras, J., Teodoro, E., Casellas, N., Vallbé, J.-J., Poblet, M., Casanovas, P. “Accelerating Semantic Search with Application of Specific Platforms”. In Michel Klein, Paulo Quaresma, and Núria Casellas (eds.). Proceedings of the Workshop on Semantic Web technology for Law (SW4Law 2007) of the International conference on AI and Law (ICAIL2007), 8th June, Stanford Law School, Palo Alto, 2007, pp. 47-50
    • Casanovas, P.; Vallbé, J-J.; Casellas, N.; Poblet, M.; Blázquez, M.; Contreras, J.; Benjamins, R.; López-Cobo, J.M. D10.4.1 After Analysis. Implementation of Iuriservice at the Spanish Judicial School. EU-IST Project IST-2003-506826. SEKT (Semantically Enabled Knowledge Technologies) Deliverable IST, 2006: 128 p.
    • N. Casellas, A. Jakulin, J.J. Vallbé, P. Casanovas (2006): “Acquiring an ontology from the text. A legal case study”. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 4031. Heidelberg-Berlin: Springer Verlag, pp. 1000-1013.
    • Casanovas, P., Poblet, M., Casellas, N., Vallbé, J. Benjamins, V.R., Contreras, J., Peña, R., Blázquez, M. “Semantic Web: a Legal Case Study”. Davis, J, Studer, P, Warren, P. (Ed.). Semantic Web Technologies. John Wiley & Sons, England, 2006, pp. 259-28.
    • Casanovas, P., Casellas, N., Poblet, M., Vallbé, J.J., Sure, Y., Vrandecic, D., “IURISERVICE II Ontology Development and Architectural Design”. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (ICAIL2005) (Bologna, Italy), June 2005. International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law 2005 (ICAIL), ACM, New York. June 2005. p. 188-194.
    • Casanovas, P., Casellas, N., Poblet, M., Vallbé, J.J., Sure, Y., Vrandecic, D., “IURISERVICE II Ontology Development”. Proceedings of the Workshop Artificial Intelligence and Law: The Regulation of electronic social systems. Law and the Semantic Web. XXII World Conference in Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Granada (Spain), May 24-29, 2005.
    • Casanovas, P.; Poblet, M.; Casellas, N.; Vallbé, J. J., Ramos, F.; Benjamins, V.R.; Blázquez, M.; Contreras, J.; Gorroñogoitia, J. 2004. D10.2.1. Legal Scenario. OPL Ontology and Architecture (200 p.), EU-IST Project–IST-2003-506826. SEKT (Semantically Enabled Knowledge Technologies) Deliverable IST.
    • Antón, J., Vallbé, J.J. “Hipertexto multimedia de Teoría Política Clásica” [Multimedia Hypertext of Classical Political Theory]. In Rodríguez, J.L., and Suau, J. (eds.): Tecnologías multimedia para la enseñanza y aprendizaje en la Universidad. Barcelona: Edicions UB, 2003. pp. 86-94.
    • Antón, J. and Vallbé, J. J. “Las ideas políticas en el siglo XX” [Political Ideas in the XXth Century], In J. Antón (coord.). Las ideas políticas en el siglo XXI, Ed. Ariel, Barcelona, 2002. pp. 1-55.

    TRANSLATIONS AND EDITIONS
    • Colville, J. The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries 1939-1955. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, Rev. Edition, 2004. Translated into Spanish as A la sombra de Churchill. Diarios de Downing Street 1939-1955. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2007.
    • Simon, Herbert A. The Sciences of the Artificial. 3rd ed. Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press, 1996. Scientific and translation revision in collaboration with Pablo Noriega. Spanish version: Las ciencias de lo artificial. Granada (Spain): Comares, 2006.
    • Vallbé, J.J. (ed.). Sátiras y aforismos de Jonathan Swift [Jonathan Swift’s Satires and Aphorisms]. Barcelona: Ed. Círculo de Lectores, 2004.
    • Vallbé, J.J. (ed.): Antología de textos políticos contemporáneos: la ideología escrita [Anthology of Contemporary Political Texts: Written Ideology]. Madrid: Tecnos, 2004.

    OTHER RELEVANT INFORMATION

    • Member of the European Political Science Association (EPSA).
    • Former member of the American Political Science Association (APSA), and of the Information Technology and Politics, and Political Methodology APSA sections.
    • Elected member of the Department Council of the Constitutional Law and Political Science Department of the Universitat de Barcelona since March 2008.
    • Editorial coordinator of La Razón Áurea Series of Comares Publishing Company (Granada, Spain).
    • Member of the editorial board of the Journal of Catalan Intellectual History.
    • Member of the Spanish Political Science Association (AECP).
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