Emilio Fernandez Peña

Emilio Fernández Peña is Communication Professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and head of its Olympic Studies Centre since december, 2009. He is the founder director of the Sport Research InstituteUAB which joins 40 senior researchers from 12 different departments. This Institute analyzes sport with a strong multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach. Emilio is doctor in Communication by the Basque Country University with Outstanding Award (2001). He is the creator and teacher of the Massive Online Course (MOOC) The Olympic Games and the Mediawhich was launched in 2014 on Coursera and it has had more than 8,000 enrolled students since its creation. Dr. Fernández Peña has been the promoter and main designer of the new degree on Interactive Communication in the UAB, which is oriented to train the students with a holistic vision of technology, allocated in the intersection between engineering, communication and libertal arts. He is author of more than 50 academic publications, being author of Juegos Olímpicos, Televisión y Redes Sociales (2016) and Social Media in the Global Sport: Strategies and Practice, Routledge (2021) He has been interviewed by media outlets such as BBC, CNN or Folha de São Paulo, among many others.  He has collaborated in the field of social networks with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and he has worked on the design of the television exhibition of the IOC Olympic Museum in Lausanne (2014). He is a regular invited lecturer to the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.