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Red Geocrítica
Internacional |
HORACIO CAPEL SAEZ
Short Curriculum vitae of Horacio Capel (August 2020)
Professor of Human Geography at the University of Barcelona. He has been professor or visiting scholar at several universities in Europe and America and he and is Doctor Honoris Causa of five Universities: the Universidad Nacional de San Juan, Argentina (1999), the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina (2002), the Universidad de Buenos Aires (2010), the Universidad de León (2018), and the Universidad de Lleida (2019). He has directed more than 70 Doctoral Theses and a large number of graduate thesis, research reports and Diplomas of Advanced Studies (DEA). His first publications date from 1964 and since then amount to several hundred in scientific journals of a dozen of countries. His work can be read, originally published or translated, in Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Italian, French and German.
Until the mid-1970s, Professor Capel conducted research on issues related to urban geography (morphology, and urban systems) and perception of space; on these topics he is the author of several books such as Estudios sobre el sistema urbano (1974 and 1982), Capitalismo y morfología urbana en España (1975 and four successive editions; new expanded edition 1991). From mid-1970s he turned his attention to history and the theory of geography and science; in this regard, books as Filosofía y ciencia en la geografía contemporánea (1981 and 1983; Italian edition 1981; Brazilian edition vol. I, 2004), La Física Sagrada. Creencias religiosas y teorias científicas en los orígenes de la geomorfología española (1985), De Palas a Minerva. La formación científica y la estructura institucional de los ingenieros militares en el siglo XVIII (in collaboration, 1988), and O nascimento da ciência moderna e a América (1999) could be highlighted.
Since the late 1980s he has worked, among others, on issues related to technical innovation and the local environment. During 2000 he returned to work on issues related to cities. Among his most popular books are works dedicated to urban issues as: Dibujar el mundo. Borges y la geografía del siglo XXI (2001), La morfología de las ciudades. Sociedad, cultura y espacio urbano (2 published volumes, 2002 and 2005), La cosmópolis y la ciudad (2003); Los ferro-carriles en la ciudad. Redes técnicas y configuración del espacio urbano (2011) and El patrimonio: la construcción de pasado y del futuro (2014).
Other activities include editing the journal Geo Critica. Cuadernos Críticos de Geografía Humana (100 issues published between 1976 and 1994) and the launch of the website Geocrítica, at the University of Barcelona (in http://www.ub.es/geocrit/menu.htm), where, in addition to other scientific materials, three on-line journals are available, of which he is editor or co-editor: Scripta Nova. Revista Electrónica de Geografía y Ciencias Sociales (from 1998, 400 published issues, with some two thousand papers), Biblio 3W. Revista Bibliográfica de Geografía y Ciencias Sociales (from 1996, more 980 published issues) and Aracne. Recursos en Internet para la Geografía y las Ciencias Sociales (150 issues). The first of these on-line journals has a great impact on the scientific community of geographers and is included in the databases of ISI, in the Social Science Citation Index.
Since 1999 he has organized several international seminars and meetings, highlighting the annual Coloquio Internacional de Geocrítica, which has been held twelve times, seven in Barcelona and five on the American continent (Santiago de Chile, Mexico City, Porto Alegre, Buenos Aires and Bogotá), with some 1.500 papers presented, published in Scripta Nova and in the form of Actae (<http://www.ub.es/geocrit/ciu.htm>).
Among the awards received is the Distinction for Research Activity from the Generalitat de Catalunya (2003), the Preston James Eminent Latin Americanist Career Award from the Conference of Latin American Geographers of the Association of American Geographers (2006), the Prix International de Géographie Vautrin Lud 2008 and the Premio Combiano de Geografía Francisco José de Caldas, ang Gold Medal, from the Asociación de Geógrafos Colombianos (ACOGE), in 2012..
