Francisco Mata Andrades

Biography

Francisco Mata has a Ph.D. in Urban Planning from the London School of Economics (LSE) (GB), where he had also obtained his masters degree in the same subject, with a focus on city marketing. His undergraduate degree was in advertising and public relations (University of Navarra) (ES). For two years, he taught a course at the LSE on various philosophical approaches to geography. He had previously worked in marketing firms in several countries across the world, and in 2004 founded in London a consultancy on city image and strategy. In recent years his interest developed into more theoretical aspects of the experience of space. In fact, his Ph.D. thesis was entitled: “A development of a phenomenological approach to the image of the city and city marketing.” He put forward an innovative complement to traditional cost-benefit analyses used in city marketing, drawing from Heidegger’s ideas on spatiality. During 2009 he visited the Department of Philosophy at Yale University (US) where he worked as a research associate, deepening his research on phenomenology and space. He joined IE University in the fall 2009, and he teaches “Ethics” to all undergraduate students, as well as “Urban Theory” and “Urban Workshop” to second-year architecture students. He is also currently setting up an interdisciplinary research group on applied ontological thinking, whereby he aims to deepen the understanding on the relationship between mind, matter and community life. Since September 2010, he is also Dean of Undergraduate Studies at IE University.

Research Interest

Business