Francisco Cebrián Abellán is Professor of Human Geography in the Department of Geography and Spatial Planning at the University of Castilla-La Mancha -UCLM- (Spain). For 13 years he served as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the UCLM. The director of the Urban-Regional Studies Research Group. The director of the Centre for Ibero-American Territorial Studies of the UCLM. The president of the Standing Committee of the Latin American Geography Group of the Spanish Association of Geography (AGE) until January 2025.
Over the past decade, he has been the principal investigator and collaborator on several national, European and regional projects, all obtained within a competitive process. He has authored more than seventy articles in indexed journals and numerous book chapters, published in both Spanish and English. He has completed numerous research stays at American and European universities and has supervised four doctoral theses. He has led the organisation of national and international seminars and scientific meetings, several of which have focused specifically on Latin American geography.
His scientific activity centers on the conceptual and methodological aspects of urbanization dynamics, urban morphology, urban planning, socio-economic structures, and urban policies, with a particular emphasis on intermediary cities. His work primarily focuses on the analysis of differentiated processes connected to the spatial realities of Latin American and Spain.
Jhon Williams Montoya G. is Professor in the Department of Geography at the National University of Colombia, where he has worked since 1997, currently on sabbatical. Director of the Geourbe research group, category A1, the highest classification in the Colombian research system. He is currently developing a research project aimed at consolidating a research network on urban and urban-regional systems. As part of this project, he produces texts on urban historiography, city-regional dynamics focused on Bogotá and an analysis of the relationship between medium-sized cities and crime.
His main interest is urban geography, including political geography and the history of geography. In the last three years he has directed two major projects: ‘Territory and Conflict’ and a ‘Historical Atlas of the Armed Conflict in Colombia (1964-2017)’, the latter of which has resulted in several publications on the territorial dimension of the Colombian conflict. Additionally, he works in the project ‘Cooperation Network for Research on Urban and Territorial Problems’, has participated in two projects on metropolitan dynamics, directed one on historical geography, and intervened in another on the Amazonian urban system. He is currently collaborating with IGAC on a research project on urban systems and territorial dynamics of the armed conflict in Colombia.