José Santana Pereira (Nisa, 1982) is a doctor of Political and Social Sciences (EUI, Florence, 2012). José's research has been focused on the media effects on public opinion and the study of media systems in comparative perspective. His research interests also include electoral behavior and political attitudes (namely attitudes towards Europe and, more recently, populist attitudes). He published several papers and book chapters in English, Portuguese and French. In January 2016 José published the essay Política e Entretenimento. After the B.A. in Social Psychology (ISCTE, 2004) and before becoming a PhD researcher at the EUI (2008), José worked as research assistant in the project «Portuguese Voting Behavior and Political Attitudes» (ICS), which carried out the National Election Studies in Portugal. Between 2013 and 2017 he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon. During and after the PhD, he collaborated in research projects such as the «EU Profiler» (implementation of a voting advice application during the 2009 European election campaign) and the «Media Profiler» (design of an online platform for the comparative analysis of the media in the EU), both hosted by the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS). More recently, he was co-leader of the Portuguese team working at the «EUandI» project, researcher at the «Participation in the EU decision-making: Portugal in comparative perspective» project and leader of the Portuguese team in the project «Where is My Party?». He is currently one of the researchers in charge of the projects «Media Systems in Europe» and «Mechanisms and Impacts of Abstention in Portugal», sponsored by FFMS. José is also the country coordinator for Italy in the project Varieties of Democracy and one of the researchers in charge of the ICS-ISCTE opinion polls. 

I am currently a PhD student in Political Science at ISCTE-IUL and I hold a doctoral fellowship from FCT to develop a research concerning the explanatory factors of the European citizens’ attitudes towards elections. I have a BA and a MA in Political Science from ISCTE-IUL, with a MA dissertation related with the Portuguese electorate attitudes towards compulsory voting. I have collaborated with several research projects, with national and European funding, namely “Public Preferences and Policy Decision Making. A Comparative Analysis", coordinated by Dr. Ana Maria Belchior (CIES-ISCTE), and “MAPLE – Measuring and Analysing the Politicisation of Europe before and after the Eurozone Crisis”, coordinated by Dr. Marina Costa Lobo (ICS-UL). 

Ana Lúcia Sá, PhD in Sociology, is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and Public Policy, and a researcher at the Centre for International Studies at Iscte - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa. She is deputy dean of the School of Sociology and Public Policy and deputy director of the Department of Political Science and Public Policy. She is a member of the Scientific Commission of the Centre for Interational Studies. She belongs to the African Politics and International Relations research group of the European Network of African Studies (AEGIS) and the African Studies Section of the Portuguese Political Science Association. She is also a member of the Board and the Visibility Working Group of Aegis, European Network of African Studies. She is an associate researcher at the Amílcar Cabral Centre for Social Studies in Guinea-Bissau. She was a post-doctoral researcher at the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona and visiting fellow at the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University in New York. Her research focuses on authoritarian regimes in Africa, especially Angola and Equatorial Guinea, contexts on which she has published books, chapters in books and articles in journals.

 Ana Maria Belchior is an associate professor, with aggregation, in the Department of Political Science and Public Policies at ISCTE-IUL (Instituto Universitário de Lisboa) in Lisbon, and senior researcher at CIES-IUL. She is currently the coordinator of the Master in Political Science, both at ISCTE-IUL. She has been involved in research on several projects related to the themes of democracy and globalization, political participation, democratic representation, political congruence, and electoral pledges and decision-making. She has published her findings in books and book chapters, and in diverse national and international journals (eg. Comparative Political Studies, International Political Science Review, Party Politics, Sociological Methods & Research, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, or The Journal of Legislative Studies).  

Ana Mónica Fonseca is Assistant Professor at the Department of History at Iscte and, since 2022, director of the Center for International Studies at Iscte. Since January 2022, she has been the Director of the Master’s in Modern and Contemporary History and, between September 2019 and September 2023, Sub-Director of the Masters in International Studies. She is an integrated researcher at the Center for International Studies at ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (CEI-IUL), having been an elected member of its Scientific Committee between 2016 and 2022. Between 2006 and 2015 she was a research assistant (2006-2011) and researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations of Universidade Nova de Lisboa (IPRI-NOVA). She completed her Ph.D. in Modern and Contemporary History in 2011 at the Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL) with a thesis entitled "«The carnations need water now!» German Social Democracy and the Portuguese transition to Democracy (1974-1976)", which received the Honorable Mention of the Vitor de Sá Prize for Contemporary History 2012 and also the Honorable Mention of the Mário Soares-EDP Foundation Prize 2012. Her M.A. dissertation in History of International Relations (ISCTE-IUL), which received the Fundação Mário Soares Award in 2006, was published in 2007: A Força das Armas: The support of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Estado Novo (1958-1968) [Lisbon: MNE-ID, 2007]. Her research areas focus on transitions to democracy in Southern Europe, Portuguese-German relations during the Cold War and European social democracy, and the promotion of democracy. She has published regularly in national and international journals (Journal of European Integration History, Portuguese Journal of Social Sciences, Ler História, Relações Internacionais), and participated in several collective works.

David Ferraz is an Associate Professor at ISCTE and the director of the Public Administration Doctorate and Master. He holds a PhD in Public Policy from ISCTE-IUL (2018), a master's degree in Administration and Public Policy (ISCTE-IUL - 2008) and a degree in Public Management and Administration (ISCSP-UTL - 2004). He is graduated from the Advanced Studies Course in Public Management (CEAGP-2006), specialization in Organizational Development, Leadership and People Management and from the INA Public Management Training Course (FORGEP-2012). He is an integrated researcher on Iscte - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Centro de Investigação e Estudos de Sociologia (CIES-Iscte), Lisboa He was Secretary General of the Economic and Social Council until March 2022. Between 1999 and 2004 he held positions in several private sector companies. He worked in the Research and Consulting Unit of the Instituto Nacional de Administração, I.P. (2006-2010) and was head of the Training Unit in Management and Public Administration (2010-2012), was head of the INA Recruitment and Selection Division, providing this U.O. support to CRESAP (2012-2017). He was also head of the Human Resources Department at IHRU, I.P. (since September 2017). He is a guest researcher at the Center for Administration and Public Policies (CAPP) of the Higher Institute of Social and Political Sciences (ISCSP-UTL), integrating the Research Group on Administration Science. Since 2004, he has been teaching in various courses at INA and ISCTE-IUL (CAGEP; FORGEP; CADAP; Design, Implementation and Evaluation of Public Policies; Specialization Diploma in Public Management; Specialization Diploma in Public Policies; Reform and Modernization Administrative - 6 ECTS). He was invited to give lectures at HSE-Moscow (High School of Economics, School of Public Administration) in the areas of Management and Public Administration. He has participated in working groups and presented scientific communications at conferences of international organizations such as: the American Society for Public Administration, the Centro Latino Americano para el Desarollo, the International Association of Schools and Institutes of Administration, the Public Administration Theory Network. He is author and co-author of several publications, national and international, in the areas of Management, Administration, Public Policies or Human Resources Management.

Elsa Pegado has a PhD in Sociology from Iscte-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa and a Master's degree in Communication, Culture and Information Technology from the same institution. She is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Research Methods. She is a researcher and deputy director at the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology of Iscte (CIES-Iscte). She has developed research in the area of sociology of health and illness, more specifically on Complementary and Alternative Medicines and on medications; in the area of social inequalities and poverty and social exclusion; and in the field of evaluation methodologies, evaluation of public policies, programs and projects. She is author and co-author of several publications and communications on these themes.

He holds a PhD in Modern and Contemporary History - Defense and International Relations by ISCTE-IUL since 2021, with the thesis Spanish Refugees in Portugal: between policial repression and popular solidarity (1936-1945), with which he won Mário Soares -  EDP Foundation 2021 prize and an honorable mention within the scope of the Victor de Sá Prize for Contemporary History (2021).  He is a researcher at CIES - IUL in the project International collaborations: criminality and police cooperation in the Ibero-American Atlantic, c. 1870-1940, funded by the FCT (PTDC/HAR-HIS/3580/2021). He was a FCT research fellow between  2016 and 2020 (SFRH/BD/114813/2016) and a doctoral fellow in CIES-IUL. He is master in Modern and Contemporary History - International Relations by ISCTE-IUL since 2015, with the dissertation International Circulations and Liberalism. The Portuguese liberal exile, 1828-1832. In 2014 he was research fellow in the project "Social Control and Criminal Policy in Portuguese Liberalism, national reforms, transnational circulations, c.1820-1867 (EXPL/EPH-HIS/1600/2013). He is author of several articles about liberalism, Spanish Civil War and refugees. 

Gabriel Cipriano is an Invited Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Research Methods at Iscte - University Institute of Lisbon, and a researcher at CIES-Iscte (Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology). With a PhD in Policies of School Administration and Management, his main research interests focus on evaluation theories, assessment of learning, research methods and techniques, research data management, evaluation of public policies in education, school administration, and school commuting.

I am an Assistant Professor in Political Science at the University Institute of Lisbon (Iscte-IUL) and Integrated Researcher at the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology (Cies-IUL). Since 2020, I have been the co-coordinator of the Research Group on 'Politics and Citizenship'  and the Deputy-Director of the Observatory of Democracy and Political Representation (both at CIES-Iscte). I was co-charing the Social Movements RN of the Council of European Studies, being now a board-member. Between 2018 and 2022 I coordinated the FCT funded research project HOPES - HOusing PErspectives and Struggles. Futures of housing movements, policies and dynamics in Lisbon and beyond (230,000 €). My main areas of interest are social movements, right to the city and to housing, gentrification and tourism, digital activism and participation, protest and politics, democratization. I have published articles in journals including Housing Studies, Journal of Common Market Studies, Partecipazione e Conflitto, Current Sociology, Mobilization, Social Movement Studies, Journal of Contemporary Religion, West European Politics, Estudos Ibero-Americanos, Democratization, Cultures et Conflits, Análise Social, Storia e Problemi Contemporanei, Historein. My monography 'The Revolution before the Revolution' and the book I co-edited with Olivier Fillieule 'Social Movement Studies in Europe' were both published in 2016 by Berghahn. I have been teaching courses on social movements, democracy, citizenship, political culture and digital era.   

Assistant Professor at ISCTE-IUL and CIES and had completed his MSc and PhD in  Demography by FCSH of Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Member of the Associação Portuguesa de Demografia. Author of 20 scientific articles and 10 book chapters about 20 demographic topics as: fertility, contraception, mortality, migrations and demographic projections

I am a political scientist (Ph.D.), and currently, a Post-Doctoral Fellow funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology with a double affiliation CIES-ISCTE / University of Mannheim – Chair of Comparative Government, and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Konstanz. Previously I worked in several other institutions like the Technical University of Kaiserslautern, the University of Mannheim, the Open University, the Lisbon University Institute, CIES and the University of Évora, CISA-AS. I was a Research Visiting Scholar at the New York University, at the University of Mannheim and the University of Barcelona. I am an Associate Researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History – New University of Lisbon. I obtained my Doctorate in Political Science (specialization in Comparative Politics) from the University of Lisbon – Institute of Social Science. I also hold a Master’s Degree and a University Degree (Licenciatura), both pre-Bologna, in Political Science from the Technical University of Lisbon – ISCSP. My research is inter-disciplinary and centers on political institutions; comparative politics and comparative political economy; EU; legislative behaviour and decision-making; public policy analysis; political accountability and corruption. In my PhD dissertation entitled: Government’s Decision: A Theoretical and Empirical Study on Legislative Initiative as Strategic Behaviour, I developed and tested a formal model of legislative decision-making. There I show, with original data from Portugal (1982-2009), that majority status changes the strategic decisions of Governments towards law proposals. My work is published, among others, in West European Politics, Parliamentary Affairs, Crime, Law and Social Change, Rowman & Littlefield – Lexington Books, Nação e Defesa, Bertrand.

Pedro Seabra is an Assistant Professor at Iscte-University Institute of Lisbon and Deputy Director of the Center for International Studies (CEI-Iscte). He is also Director of the PhD program in History, Security Studies and Defence. He holds a PhD in Political Science, with a specialization in International Relations from the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon (ICS, ULisboa). Between April 2022 and April 2024, he worked as an Adviser in the Cabinet of the Minister of National Defence of the XXIII Constitutional Government of Portugal. Previously, he was a Researcher at the National Defence Institute (IDN), a Nuclear Security Fellow at the School of International Relations-Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV), a SUSI Fellow of the US State Department and a Leibniz-DAAD Research Fellow of the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA). In 2022 he was selected as a Paris Young Defence Leader by the Institut de Recherche Stratégique de l'Ecole Militaire (IRSEM) and as Marshall Memorial Fellow by the German Marshall Fund of the US (GMF). In 2019 he was a Visiting Professor at the Institute of International Relations-University of Brasília, Brazil (IREL-UnB) and at Universitas Islam Indonesia (UII). Between 2013 and 2016, he was a Visiting Researcher at IREL-UnB, at the Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation, University of Pretoria, South Africa (GovInn-UP) and at ICS, ULisboa. His main research interests focus on international relations, international security, South Atlantic geopolitics, and security capacity-building in Africa and his publications verse on such topics as well as on Brazilian and Portuguese foreign and defense policy, Africa and Lusophone countries.

Associate Professor with Habilitation at Iscte-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa. Director of Sociology Department. Researcher at CIES-Iscte, currently develops research in the areas of "Communication, Information Technologies and Health", "Health Literacy" and "Digital Health". ERASMUS coordinator of the Sociology Department. Associated Editor of the Observatório magazine (OBS * - http://obs.obercom.pt/index.php/obs), member of the Scientific Committee of Edicciones-InCom-UAB and of the Editorial Committee of Revista de Comunicación y Salud (https://www.revistadecomunicacionysalud.es/index.php/rcys). Author of several books and articles in the areas of Health and Communication, Health Literacy, Network Communication and Youth and Media in Portugal.

Rodrigo Vieira de Assis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Research Methods at Iscte – University Institute of Lisbon and an Integrated Researcher at the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology (CIES-Iscte). He is currently a member of the Pedagogical Council of Iscte and of the Pedagogical Committee of the School of Sociology and Public Policy (ESPP). He also serves as an alternate member of the Ethics Council of the Portuguese Sociological Association (APS). Throughout his career, he has participated in national and international research projects developed in institutions across different countries (e.g., Portugal, Brazil, United States). His recent publications have focused on issues related to social inequalities, labour precariousness, everyday life in urban peripheries, and youth sociability dynamics in socially vulnerable contexts. His current research interests include the dynamics of social inequality reproduction, the socio-political attitudes of social classes, and the relationship between labour precariousness and social protection gaps. He is committed to analysing social phenomena across multiple scales: at the micro level, he explores social trajectories, life narratives and processes of individuation, seeking to understand experiences, perceptions and everyday practices; at the macro level, he investigates the reproduction of social inequalities, as well as patterns, trends and structural changes in attitudes, perceptions and practices within stratified societies. Methodologically, he privileges multifaceted approaches, guided by both intensive and extensive research designs, including mixed methods. His experience encompasses studies based on questionnaire surveys, interview-based surveys, participant observation and urban ethnographies, applying a wide range of quantitative and qualitative methods supported by specialised software (SPSS, JAMOVI, MAXQDA, among others). Consequently, he has also been dedicated to methodological innovation in the social sciences, through the design and teaching of courses and modules, as well as the development of publications aimed at improving and disseminating best practices in the use of quantitative and qualitative methods for data analysis in sociology.

Tiago Fernandes (PhD European University Institute, Florence, 2009) is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE). He also directs the Varieties of Democracy Regional Center for Southern Europe and is a researcher at the Center for International Studies - ISCTE. He works on the politics of democracy, social movements and civil society, with a regional specialization on Southern Europe. Before coming to ISCTE, he was for twenty years in the faculty of Nova University of Lisbon, where he taught in the departments of sociology and political studies, was director of graduate studies and head of the department of political science and served in the directive board of the Portuguese Institute of International Relations (IPRI).  Selected publications: Neither Dictatorship, Nor Revolution. The Liberal Wing and the End of the Portuguese Dictatorship, Lisbon, D. Quixote / Assembleia da República (2006); Civil Society, Democracy, and Inequality: Cross-Regional Comparisons (1970s-2010s), Special Issue, Comparative Politics (2017) (co-edited); Late neoliberalism and its discontents: Comparing crises and movements in the European periphery, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2017 (co-authored); Memories and Movements. The Legacy of Democratic Transitions in Contemporary Anti-Austerity Protest, Oxford University Press, 2018 (co-authored); Forty-Five Years of Democracy in Portugal: Achievements and Prospects, Lisbon, Assembleia da República, 2020 (co-edited); Democratic Quality in Southern Europe: France, Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Spain, University of Notre Dame Press, Kellogg Series on Democracy and Development, 2024 (edited); and Portugal 1974-1975: Revolution, Counterrevolution, and Democracy, Lisbon, Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation, 2024. Together with Staffan Lindberg (Varieties of Democracy Institute - University of Gothenburg), he directs the project Varieties of Democracy in Southern Europe, which focuses on the causes and consequences of democratization in the region from the 1960s to the present and is funded by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation (https://www.v-dem.net/en/regional-centers/southern-europe/). He also coordinated the Portuguese team of the project Disobedient Democracy, led by Danijela Dolenec at the University of Zagreb and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, which looked at the causes and patterns of protest in the Southwest and Southeast regions of Europe (https://disdem.org/). He is also a non-resident fellow at the Center on Social Movement Studies (Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence). He was a visiting scholar at Princeton University, the Juan March Foundation (Madrid) and the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame (USA) and is the recipient of the Gulbenkian Foundation award for the best article in the social sciences and the Best PhD Dissertation prize of the Portuguese Political Science Association. His current research focuses on the comparative analysis of civil society mobilization against authoritarian takeovers in 19th and early 20th centuries Southern Europe; the impact of social revolution on democracy and authoritarianism; and postcolonial transformations in lusophone Africa (with Olukunle Owolabi, Villanova University). Before starting his academic career, he took a BA in Sociology (minors in History and Philosophy) and an MPhil in Historical Sociology at Nova University of Lisbon and an MPhil in Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute (Florence). He also passed the national examinations for the diplomatic service at the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he briefly attended the attaché training course (1997).

PhD in African Studies, Vasco Martins is Assistant Professor at Iscte (University Institute of Lisbon) and a researcher at the Centre for International Studies at the same institution. His research focuses on issues related to citizenship and informality, ethnicity and the politics of memory, with a particular focus on the Southern African region. He has been published in international journals such as African Studies Review, Citizenship Studies, Journal of Southern African Studies, Journal of African History, among others. Author of the book Colonialism, Ethnicity and War in Angola (Routledge, 2021), he is also Director of the journal Cadernos de Estudos Africanos.