Mayo Fuster Morell
Mayo Fuster Morell has been involved and/or developed action research in the field of the techno-political tools; social movements (Global Justice Movement, Free Culture Movement and recent mobilization wave of “indignated” in Spain); online communities; common-base peer production; and public policies. She specializes in online methods and action-participation research.
Mayo is promoter of the Building Digital Commons Forum. Previously she was promoter of Communication Commission of the International Council of the World Social Forum, Networked Politics collaborative action research and co-foundered and organized the 2009 and 2010 editions of the International Forum on access to knowledge and digital rights. She collaborates with the P2P Foundation.
A part of her personal involvements, Mayo recently concluded her PhD thesis (Title: Governance of online creation communities. Provision of infrastructure for the building of digital commons) at the European University Institute in Florence (2006-2010). She analyzed models of governance of common-based peer production and the relationship between governance, participation size and collaboration complexity. She combined a large N statistical analysis and case study comparisons (World Social Forum, Flickr, Wikihow and Wikipedia). In 2011, she developed a research at the Institute of Govern and public Policies – Autonomous University of Barcelona.
In 2008, she was visiting researcher at the School of Information – University of California Berkeley (sponsored by Howard Rheingold and Coye Cheshire) and provided teaching assistance at the Communication Department – Stanford University.
In 2010, she was postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Government and Public Policies (Autonomous University of Barcelona) and visiting scholar at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (Open University of Catalonia).
She is currently a Berkman fellow. At the Berkman Center, she is part of the Cooperation group overseen by Yochai Benkler. She is researching the dimension, evolution and governance of common-based peer production; and the meta-politics derivatives and movement of free culture and digital commons. She collaborates in research projects with Science Po and Barcelona Media.
Furthermore, she is a member of the steering committee of the Internet and Politics Standing group of the European Consortium of Political Science (ECPR); the research group on Democracy, Elections and Citizenship (Department of Political Science of the Autonomous University of Barcelona); the Research Committee of the Wikimedia Foundation; and the scientific committee of critical studies in peer production journal.
Mayo co-wrote the publications “From Free Culture to Society Commons: Map of free culture and digital commons movement in Catalonia and its role in the 15 of May-Indignated Mobilizations” (In Catalan); The Unethics of Sharing: Wikiwashing (PDF); Rethinking government in the light of the emerging organisational principles of online collective action (PDF); “Rethinking political organization in an age of movements and networks” (English and Italian version XL Editorial, Rome 2007; Spanish version, Icaria Editorial, Barcelona 2008); “Activist research and social movements” (In Catalan, El Viejo Topo Editorial, Barcelona 2005); and, “Guide of social transformation of Catalonia” (In Catalan, Edicions Collectives, Barcelona, 2003).
Mayo was born in Oliva (Valencia), a small town in front of the Mediterranean Sea. She is part of the first generation born in democracy after Franco’s Spanish dictatorship. She lives partly in Barcelona partly in cambridge (Boston). Previously, she has been based long-term in London, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Rome and Florence.
