Biography:

José Ignacio Muro Morales (Barcelona, 1960) is a lecturer in human geography at the Rovira i Virgili University (Tarragona), where he gives courses in geographical theory and methods, political geography, urban geography and applied human geography. He studied geography and doctored in the same subject at the University of Barcelona, where he has been research scholar and assistant lecturer. In 1990 he defended his doctoral thesis entitled El pensamiento militar sobre el territorio en la España contemporánea, directed by Professor Horacio Capel Sáez. This work, which was published by the Ministry of Defence in 1993, deals with the participation of technical military bodies and, in particular, of army engineers in the development of 19th century Spanish cartography. Since 1985 he has taken part in various research projects into the history of geography and of cartography, financed by public institutions and private organisations. Together with the geographers Francesc Nadal and Luis Urteaga, he has collaborated in research relating to topographical cartography and land parcel and cadastral planimetry in Spain, as well as to the organisation of geographical and statistical institutions. He is presently studying land parcel cartography and territorial statistics in the municipalities of the Tarragona province (1845-1895).