New Chair on territory and resilience

News | Institutional | Divulgation
(19/03/2024)
On Tuesday 19 March at 4.00 p.m. in the boardroom of the Rector’s Office of the University of Barcelona, the new Chair in Territory and Resilience Studies was presented. Among the attendants were Maria Teresa Vadrí, director of the Chair and lecturer at the Faculty of Law, and Joan Tort, scientific director and lecturer at the Faculty of Geography and History. Representing Aigües de Barcelona (AGBAR) was Ricard Frigola, director of Institutional and Citizen Relations.
News | Institutional | Divulgation
19/03/2024
On Tuesday 19 March at 4.00 p.m. in the boardroom of the Rector’s Office of the University of Barcelona, the new Chair in Territory and Resilience Studies was presented. Among the attendants were Maria Teresa Vadrí, director of the Chair and lecturer at the Faculty of Law, and Joan Tort, scientific director and lecturer at the Faculty of Geography and History. Representing Aigües de Barcelona (AGBAR) was Ricard Frigola, director of Institutional and Citizen Relations.
The Chair will have as its essential objectives the promotion of a set of teaching, research, training, information and documentation activities in the field of urban and territorial transformation, understood from the perspective of the concepts of resilience and sustainability.

Conceived with an interdisciplinary perspective, but with a research nature and subject linked above all to legal and geographical studies, the Chair — whose starting point is the Mediterranean Environmental Research Group (GRAM) — is attached to the UB’s Faculty of Law. Its scientific director is Joan Tort, professor of Geography, and its director is Maria Teresa Vadrí, professor of Administrative Law. Xavier Úbeda, professor at the UB, Ramon Galindo, associate professor at the UB, and Albert Santasusagna, lecturer at the UB, will also take part as researchers.

The Rector, Joan Guàrdia, stressed “the strategic importance of this chair, both in terms of the collaboration with a corporation like AGBAR and the academic objectives: the study of the territory from a holistic perspective, linked to such transcendental concepts as sustainability and resilience”.

The UB-Agbar collaboration, which began in 2016, took the form of two collaboration agreements specifically dedicated to research into the intellectual and scientific legacy of the creator of Barcelona's Eixample. The first agreement focuses on the environmental bases of urban science according to Ildefons Cerdà and the second is aimed at compiling materials for a Cerdà dictionary on urban planning and environmental sustainability.  Now, the creation of the chair “will make it possible to complete this work and develop others, which, based on the premise of the validity of Cerdà's scientific thought, will have as a fundamental objective the development of research, training, dissemination and transfer of knowledge in everything related to the planning of cities and territory”, explains Professor Vadrí.

For his part, Ricard Frigola, AGBAR's Director of Institutional and Citizen Relations stated that “the current drought situation in Catalonia is highlighting this new reality that AGBAR is facing with the dedication of its professionals, technology and joint work with the administrations. This chair will be a good instrument to work on identifying the axes and priorities in the face of these challenges”.
The UB and Aigües de Barcelona have created a new Chair dedicated to studies related to urban and territorial transformation.
Among other actions, the Chair will pursue the improvement and innovation in the contents and methodologies of the subjects of the various UB bachelor's and master's degree courses related to the subjects of the Chair. It will also design and implement various courses and activities for postgraduate training in the field of territorial and urban transformation, and will disseminate to society the knowledge and results of the research activity carried out.
 

Joan Tort (Terrassa, 1958) graduated in Law and in Geography and History, and holds a PhD in Geography. He has been a lecturer at the UB since 1990, and was the director of the Department of Geography from 2018 to 2022. He has worked in the fields of regional analysis, rural and agricultural geography, spatial and urban planning, political and administrative geography, toponymy, landscape and the cultural and historical aspects of geography, as well as in its theoretical dimension (geographical thought) and in the interrelations between literature and geography. He is the author (or co-author) and editor (or co-editor) of forty works related to the above-mentioned thematic fields.
 

Maria Teresa Vadrí (El Pla de Santa Maria, 1967) holds a PhD in Law with a European doctorate certification and has been a tenured lecturer in Administrative Law since 2003. Her lines of research have focused on environmental law and the analysis of environmental and territorial policies from a legal perspective. In particular, her areas of expertise are environmental legal instruments, spatial and landscape planning and governance for sustainability. She has participated and been the principal investigator in different projects, and is also a member of the Mediterranean Environmental Research Group (GRAM - SGR). Since its constitution in 2006 she has been a member of the Observatory of Environmental Policies, the Observatory of Public Law and the Scientific Committee of the Hub on Global Sustainability of the UB. From 2008 to the present he has held various management positions in different government teams in both the Faculty of Law and the Rector's Office.

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