Alistair Duff is a visiting professor (March – September 2021), working on a project entitled ‘Castells versus Bell: a Comparative Analysis of Two Grand Theorists of the Information Age’. He hopes a comparative approach will yield major dividends for our understanding of the global information society. He is an external examiner at Aberystwyth University (Wales) and emeritus professor of information policy at Edinburgh Napier University (Scotland), and was previously a visiting fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. He holds degrees from the Universities of London, Glasgow and Strathclyde.