Ignacio Villaverde Menéndez, Professor of Constitutional Law, has been elected as rector of the University of Oviedo under the first electronic vote to be held in the institution's history. Villaverde was elected with 52.45% of the votes, compared to 47.50% for the other candidate, the current rector, Santiago García Granda.

 

Ignacio Villaverde Menéndez is a founding member of the DERECONS Excellence Group, as well as a partner of the Constitutionalists Association of Spain and member of its board since 2013. He has taken part in both national (8) and European (1) research projects. He has written several books and numerous scientific articles in national and foreign journals on fundamental rights, freedom of expression and information and the right to be informed, the right to privacy, honour, data protection, transparency, constitutional justice and the territorial organisation of the state. He has been a visiting professor at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, the London School of Economics and Politics, La Sapienza in Rome, the Department of Constitutional Law at the University of Florence, and most recently at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg.

 

At the Asturian university, Prof Villaverde has held the positions of secretary of the Department of Public Law, secretary general, vice-rector for Coordination, Communication and Institutional Relations, and secretary of the Council for Social Affairs. Outside the academic institution, he has been a lawyer at the Constitutional Court, director of Legal Services for Gijón City Council, and member of the Principality of Asturias' Communication Council.