To understand the local one also has to understand the global, says communication professor Manuel Castells.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a better source on international issues – Castells has written 22 academic books and lectured at more than 300 institutions in 47 countries.

“I keep an international focus because in my research I follow the key transformations at the macro level,” he says. “We are in a global system. You cannot understand the U.S. from the U.S., or Europe from Europe. You have to understand everything from where it happens and relate it to the other processes in the world – that’s what globalization is.”

Castells’ students are learning from perhaps the foremost social scientist/communication scholar in the world.

“Students like to work with me because I am familiar with their countries,” he says. “American students learn what’s going on in the world firsthand by observing the dialogue between me and other students.”