Dr Marta Poblet Balcell, Vice-Chancellor's Senior Research Fellow.

VISUAL: Dr Marta Poblet Balcell, Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow, Graduate School of Business and Law. RMIT University logo.

VISUAL: Dr Marta Poblet Balcell, RMIT University speaking to and smiling at camera.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: My first impressions of Melbourne, when I came in 2012, were oh, this looks ... this city really looks like home because Barcelona has also a very cultural life, it’s a city where people live by the sea and just like in Melbourne.

VISUAL: Dr Marta Poblet Balcell walking down Swanston Street, in front of RMIT’s Building 37, camera is behind her. There are people walking beside her on footpath and a car and a tram goes past.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: Melbourne is a very open city, people live by the sea, they like being outside and it’s a very ...

VISUAL: Dr Marta Poblet Balcell and male colleague are sitting in lounge area speaking and smiling at each other.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: ... warm atmosphere. So I didn’t feel really in a foreign country when I came to Melbourne for the first time.

VISUAL: Dr Marta Poblet Balcell speaking to camera.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: My research for the past 10 years has been focusing ...

VISUAL: Close up of Dr Marta Poblet Balcell reading and scrolling on her tablet.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: ... on law and technology and how technology can enable ...

VISUAL: Close up of two unidentified young people sitting aside each other and both holding smart phones and using their thumbs to scroll and read its contents. The female has an iPad in a red case on her lap and the other young person has his computer satchel just beside his lap.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: ... and enhance people’s participation in legal processes.

VISUAL: Dr Marta Poblet Balcell speaking to camera.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: For the last two, three years, I have been specifically focusing on the disaster management movement because participation via crowdsourcing and digital mapping has been a case in point.

VISUAL: Digital image of geomapping on island of Haiti, red lines are roads and green lines are rivers. The mapping starts on 11 January 2010 and shows large red concentric expanding circles on 12 January 2010 when earthquake occurred. Then as the days progress the map is covered in lots of white lines. The camera zooms in on Haiti’s capital city, Port-au-Prince which then shows lots of little light green dots. A title with RMIT logo reads: Geomapping, post Earthquake, Haiti 2010.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: Especially, since the earthquake in Haiti where volunteers from around the world started to contribute to the response by translating and mapping those events on digital maps. It’s been a lot of new developments for the past three years in disaster management area, especially focusing on crowdsourcing and digital mapping methods. I see a future where social media will have a major ...

VISUAL: Close up of Dr Marta Poblet Balcell reading her tablet. She clicks on her Twitter account.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: ... impact on crisis management. People will be able to update their status ...

VISUAL: Dr Marta Poblet Balcell speaking to camera.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: ... in a crisis by providing very granular real?time information ...

VISUAL: Close up of unidentified person’s hand holding smartphone and scrolling through a FireReady website, clicks on the Social Media option and then chooses CFA Facebook. Then, with their thumb, scrolls through CFA’s Facebook page.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: ... so that other people, volunteers or professional organisations, will be able to immediately send that data, collect them ...

VISUAL: Dr Marta Poblet Balcell speaking to camera.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: ... map them and respond.

VISUAL: Dr Marta Poblet Balcell sitting in RMIT’s Swanston Academic Building (just outside The Vines coffee shop), reading her tablet, looking up as she is thinking and then clicking on Facebook and scrolling through. The link she chooses is via a map of Columbia and the website she enters has a United Nations logo on the page and it’s in Spanish.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: Also on the legal and ethical consequences for people to participate in those efforts, consider that not all the social media information is very trustable. So where are the limits of verification? Where are the limits of trust in social media? That’s also something that interests me a lot to analyse as a legal researcher.

VISUAL: Dr Marta Poblet Balcell walking down lane on RMIT’s campus, towards camera.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: The transition to a job in another university ...

VISUAL: Dr Marta Poblet Balcell speaking to camera.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: ... is never easy but I have to say that with RMIT it has been very smooth.

VISUAL: Video of Dr Marta Poblet’s office door open (name is on the door) and in the background Dr Marta Poblet is typing on the computer at her desk.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: I decided to apply for an RMIT Fellowship because I sensed that ...

VISUAL: Dr Marta Poblet Balcell speaking to camera.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: ... this university had a very inter?disciplinary culture ...

VISUAL: Dr Marta Poblet Balcell sitting in a café and speaking with a female colleague.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: ... and it was a very dynamic university where people could contribute from different perspectives. In practical terms, I think it’s important to have ...

VISUAL: Dr Marta Poblet Balcell speaking to camera.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: ... a research cluster where you can collaborate on a daily basis with other people, may this be PhD students or colleagues from other departments.

VISUAL: Dr Marta Poblet Balcell sitting in a café speaking with female colleague, they are smiling and laughing together.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: It really encourage this inter?disciplinary culture that it’s most needed in social sciences ...

VISUAL: Dr Marta Poblet Balcell speaking to camera.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: ... and in particular in the domains I’m doing research on.

VISUAL: Dr Marta Poblet Balcell sitting at an outside table of a café at RMIT. She is looking at her tablet and reading through paperwork and writing notes. There is also a takeaway coffee cup on the table.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: Definitely RMIT is the place where I would like to be at the moment. It was a personal choice ...

VISUAL: Dr Marta Poblet Balcell standing in the portal at a glass railing of RMIT’s Swanston Academic Building looking out on the street below, camera is at a distance to her side.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: ... it was a family choice as well. I couldn’t imagine now a better place ...

VISUAL: Close up of Dr Marta Poblet Balcell standing in the portal of the Swanston Academic Building.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: ... to develop my research.

VISUAL: Dr Marta Poblet Balcell speaking to and smiling at camera.

Dr Marta Poblet Balcell: So it’s been very, very exciting from the very beginning.

VISUAL: Find out more at www.rmit.edu.au/research/research-fellowship-schemes.

VISUAL: RMIT University logo and website www.rmit.edu.au.

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