About me

Writing an “About page” about yourself is always quite complicated, but even more when you cannot choose the right words that better answer the question “what do you do?”. Well, actually I do -and have been doing- many different things, so, in no particular order, I’m a writer, PhD in computer science, a former high performance athlete (mainly for table tennis, though I’ve practiced many sports) and a motivational speaker, among others. As most of these have their own sections on the site (you’re welcome to explore them), I’ll just introduce my background a little bit.

I studied a degree in Computer Science at UPC University in Barcelona, although, previously, I had started the degree of Journalism at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). Afterwards, I did an Erasmus Mundus masters (in France and Portugal) in Linguistics and Natural Language Processing, as I really love languages (I speak Catalan, Spanish, English, French, Portuguese and, more or less, Japanese), and, finally, I finished my PhD in Augmentative and Alternative Communication, Software Accessibility and Machine Translation to improve pictogram-based communication used by people with severe speech impairments on December 2017. After my PhD, I spent 2018 in Japan, studying, traveling and writing. You can see more on this trip on my Instagram and at Accessible Japan.

Joan playing basketball in the UK

Aside from sport, I’ve got many hobbies: astronomy, music (every once in a while, I compose songs on my computer), acting (I performed at Barcelona’s Opera House, Liceu, and was the protagonist of Glance Up’s documentary), reading, etc. As you can see, I’m quite multifaceted.

Before finishing, just a detail, as you’ll see, I’m one meter tall (98cm to be precise), though I won’t go much into it. For those interested, I’ve got spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita (SEDc). You can find lots on it on the Internet. Nevertheless, related to being a little person, late 2014 I founded Sports PTB, an association that promoted inclusive sport for people with dwarfism. Also, since 2014, I’m an advisor of the Spanish Sports Federation for People with Disabilities (FEDDF) concerning sport for little people.