With more than a decade of experience working within the Mondragon Cooperatives ecosystem (2002–2011), he has recently contributed to the international debate on Data Cooperatives as an Alternative to the Centralized Digital Economy through Project Liberty and Decentralization Research Centre (DRC), building on his extensive academic publications on data cooperatives, decentralized data governance and Web3.
Over the past two decades, Prof. Calzada has led research at the intersection of digital inclusion, territorial development, and emerging technologies, focusing on how decentralization and Web3 paradigms—including Data Cooperatives—can reconfigure data governance and AI. From 2012 to 2022, he held senior scientific roles at the University of Oxford, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, and UN-Habitat.
He is currently Professor in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences and Humanities (Unibasque) and a Basque Foundation for Science’s Principal Investigator at the University of the Basque Country (EHU), based in the Public Policy & Economic History Department. An Established Researcher (R3) with 20 years of international experience, he is currently affiliated with Cardiff University (UK) and is a US-UK Fulbright Commission Scholar in California (USA),collaborating as DRC Fellow (Canada). He is also Invited Professor at the Warsaw School of Economics (SGH, Poland), the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi, India), and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME, Hungary).He has held academic positions in 14 universities across Europe and North America and is widely recognized for his contributions to digital governance and urban innovation. With over 5,170 citations on Google Scholar (h-index 34, i10-index 72), he was named one of Apolitical’s 100 Most Influential Academics in Government and Distinguished Academic Senior Fellow at the Future Government Institute.