MARIA ESTRELLA
GUALDA CABALLERO

Full Professor of Sociology at the University of Huelva (Spain), Full Member of the Academia Iberoamericana de La Rábida, and past President of the Andalusian Sociological Association (2018-2022). She holds a PhD in Sociology and a Master of Arts in Political Science and Sociology from the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain). She develops her work at the Department of Sociology, Social Work and Public Health where is Director of the Social Studies and Social Intervention Research Centre. She is also a member of the COIDESO Research Centre at the University of Huelva, a founder member of the Narratives & Social Changes – International Research Group, an Associate Researcher of the International Lab for Innovative Social Research, and a founder member of the Applied Computational Social Sciences Lab. In past times, she has also been a member of the Scientific Council at the Research Centre for Spatial and Organisational Dynamics at the University of Algarve (Faro, Portugal). She has been Visiting Senior Fellow at the University of Salerno, at the London School of Economic and Political Science, based at the Centre for the Study of Human Rights; a Visiting Scholar at Princeton University; at Arizona State University; and at Universität Augsburg. She has been a member of the Management Committe (Workgroup: Social Media) in the COST Action: Comparative Analysis of Conspiracy Theories (COMPACT), CA COST Action CA15101 (2016-2020) funded by the European Union Framework Programme Horizon 2020, coordinated by the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen (Alemania), and integrated by 33 countries. She has recently got involved in other projects such as DIVERSE: Diversity improvement as a viable enrichment resource for society and economy (Ref. HOME/201213/EIFX/CA/CFP4000004248), funded by the EC Home Affairs. Throughout her career Professor Gualda has managed many projects and published several books, book chapters and scientific articles in the fields of sociology, social exclusion, migrations and minorities, cross-border issues, social networks, social capital, and most recently on social media. Current Interests: She has a particular interest in transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to social, political, economic and cultural issues, advances in research methods, techniques and software for social and applied sciences, sociological and other social science theories, big data, social media, human rights, migrations, diversity, interculturality, intercultural mediation, intercultural dialogue, integration, borders, social justice, racism, xenophobia, exclusion, rumour, stereotypes, conspiracies, and connected issues. She is actually very committed with the develop of the Computational Sociology and the Computational Social Sciences.