Dr Stefano De Sabbata

Stefano De Sabbata

Lecturer in Quantitative Geography

Bennett Building, F56

Tel: +44 (0)116 252 3812

Personal details

I hold a BSc and a MSc in computer science from the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Udine and was awarded my PhD from the Department of Geography of the University of Zurich in 2013.

I joined the Department of Geography in October 2015 as Lecturer in Quantitative Geography. I'm also Research Associate of the Oxford Internet Institute of the University of Oxford.

Previously, I was a Researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute of the University of Oxford (2013-2015) and Junior Research Fellow at the Wolfson College of the University of Oxford (2014-2015).

I am also:

A member of the Commission on Location Based Services of the International Cartographic Association
Part of the Connectivity, Inclusion, and Inequality Group of the Oxford Internet Institute of the University of Oxford
A member of the European Network Exploring Research into Geospatial Information Crowdsourcing (ENERGIC, COST Action IC1203)
Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society

External projects

Websites

Research

My research focuses on geographic information science, critical GIS, and quantitative human geography. My current research focuses on the analysis and critique of the geographies of information, with a particular interest on internet content production and representativeness, as well as location-based services, working on the concept of geographic relevance, and geographic information retrieval.

Interests

Quantitative geography
Geographic information science
Information geographies
Internet
Geographic relevance
Location-based services
Geographic information retrieval
Critical GIS
Geocomputation
Information visualisation
Public participation GIS
Volunteer geographic information
Data science
Big data

Teaching

Interests

Information visualisation
Quantitative geography
Geographic information systems
Programming
Databases
Data analysis
Data science

Publications

You can view my Google Scholar profile for a full list of publications.

Querying VGI by semantic enrichment
R. Lemmens, G. Falquet, S. De Sabbata, B. Jiang and B. Bucher European Handbook of Crowdsourced Geographic Information, 2016 p.185.

Assessing geographic relevance for mobile search: A computational model and its validation via crowdsourcing
T Reichenbacher, S De Sabbata, R S Purves, S I Fabrikant-Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2016
doi: 10.1002/asi.23625

Towards a study of information geographies:(im) mutable augmentations and a mapping of the geographies of information
M Graham, S De Sabbata, MA Zook - Geo: Geography and Environment, 2, 88-105, 2015
doi: 10.1002/geo2.8

Geographic dimensions of relevance
S De Sabbata, S Mizzaro, T Reichenbacher, D Bawden - Journal of Documentation, 71, 650-666, 2015
doi: 10.1108/JD-12-2013-0167

Collaborative Visualizations for Wikipedia Critique and Activism
S De Sabbata, K Eccles, S Hale, R Straumann… - Ninth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 2015

Mapping Information Wealth and Poverty: The Geography of Gazetteers
M Graham, S De Sabbata - Graham, M. and De Sabbata, S, 2015

Computing geographic relevance in mobile information services
S De Sabbata, T Reichenbacher - Context-Awareness in Geographic Information Services (CAGIS 2014), 17-28, 2014

Criteria of geographic relevance: an experimental study
S De Sabbata, T Reichenbacher - International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 26, 1495-1520, 2012
doi: 10.1080/13658816.2011.639303

Doctoral thesis

De Sabbata, S. (2013). Assessing Geographic Relevance for Mobile Information Services

Supervision

Information geographies
Internet geographies
Critical GIS
Public participation GIS
Volunteer geographic information
Geocomputation
Visual analytics

I am interested in supervising students on the following topics:

Quantitative, network analysis, and visual analytics approaches to “nature 2.0” analysis
Use of public participation GIS methods in grassroots movements

Study of information inequalities: urban/rural divides in access, participation, and representation on the internet
Geodemographic analysis
Regional analysis of open data and volunteer geographic information

Quantitative, network analysis, and visual analytics approaches to understanding online activism
Development and application of public participation GIS approaches

Media

20 January 2016 – World Economic Forum: What is the future of the internet?
28 April 2015 – The Guardian: The hidden biases of Geodata
23 September 2014 – Huffington Post: Map Shows The World's Internet Population
14 May 2014 – Wired.co.uk: Infographic: A freelance working week revealed
23 April 2014 – Nikkei: Internet Mapping
4 April 2014 – Washington Post: Talk about a series of tubes: Undersea Internet cables mapped like the London Underground
3 April 2014 – ITV: London Underground map depicts Internet's backbone
2 April 2014 – Sky News: The Tube-Style Map Of The Internet's Backbone
18 March 2014 – The Guardian: Interactive: which countries have the most Google search results?
14 March 2014 – Jeune Afrique: Internet : à quel point votre pays est-il connu sur Google?
14 March 2014 – Washington Post: Why the wealthiest countries are also the most open with their data
25 February 2014 – The Atlantic: There Are More Wikipedia Articles About This One Small Part of the World Than the Rest of It Combined
8 November 2013 – Die Zeit Data Blog: Die Kolonialmächte des Internets
6 November 2013 – Washington Post: The US, Germany, and Britain still dominate the Internet
6 November 2013 – Slate: Why You Won't Find Tuvalu on a Map of the World's Internet Domains
30 October 2013 – Epoca: Um império chamado Google
12 October 2013 – Business Insider: Here's Where The 6 Billion Photos On Flickr Come From
10 October 2013 – The Atlantic: What the world would look like if countries were as big as their online populations
10 October 2013 – Gizmodo: Here's a world map adjusted for each country's internet population
6 October 2013 – Times of India: Google most popular site globally: Report
5 October 2013 – India Today: Google, Facebook rule Age of Internet Empires
4 October 2013 – The Atlantic: Age of Internet Empires: One Map With Each Country's Favorite Website
4 October 2013 – La Nacion: Cuáles son los sitios web más populares del mundo en cada país
4 October 2013 – ZDNet: Google vs. Facebook vs. Baidu: Battle of the Internet empires
4 October 2013 – NPR: Google Vs. Facebook: A Map Of Global Conquest
3 October 2013 – CBC News: And The World's Most Popular Websites Are…
3 October 2013 – The Guardian: Facebook or Google: which website rules the world?
29 September 2013 – Huffington Post: Map shows the world's internet population
La Stampa: La geografia secondo Internet: Come il popolo del web "cambia" il mondo