Helge Jörgens is an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science and Public Policy of the ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa and an Integrated Researcher at CIES-IUL – Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology, in Lisbon Portugal. He holds a PhD from Freie Universität Berlin. From 2010 to 2016 he was tenured Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the Freie Universität Berlin and Managing Director of the Environmental Policy Research Centre (FFU). His research interests include environmental, energy and climate policies, the role and influence of international public administrations, and the diffusion and transfer of public policies.

I am a visiting associate professor at ISCTE-IUL, a researcher at the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology (CIES-IUL) and a senior researcher at the Strategy and Studies Office of the Ministry of Economy and the Sea. I'm a member of the Board of the Institute for Public and Social Policy (IPPS-IUL) and a member of the scientific committee of the PhD programme in Public Policy. I did a degree in political science and sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid (1992), a master's degree in social sciences at the Centre for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (CEACS) of the Juan March Institute for Studies and Research in Madrid (1994) and a doctorate in political science at the Autonomous University of Madrid (2001). I am a Doctoral Fellow of the Juan March Institute for Studies and Research, a member of the Spanish Social Policy Network and a member of the Portuguese Political Science Association. I have lectured at the following universities: University of Coimbra (2001-2008), University of Évora (2008-2011), ISCSP-UL (2011-2018), Universidade Aberta (2013-2016) and ISCTE (2010-2012, since 2017). I have participated in various research projects, including the project funded by Norface (2014-2018): "Healthdox: The Paradox of Health State Future", or the project funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (2001-2005): "Political Economy of Social Policy Institutions". I have recently coordinated the report: "CAF Challenges to Promote Public Sector Capacity" under the Portuguese Presidency of the EU (EUPAN, 2021). My areas of interest lie in the encounter between comparative political science and public policy. I am interested in exploring the influence of theoretical models, institutions and political preferences on the formulation of public policies, as well as analyzing the determinants of public opinion regarding the welfare system.

Tiago Fernandes (PhD European University Institute, Florence, 2009) is associate professor (with habilitation) in the department of political science and public policy and a researcher of the Center for International Studies (CEI) at the University Institute of Lisbon – ISCTE (Portugal). He works on the politics of democracy, social movements and civil society, with a regional specialization on Southern Europe (https://ciencia.iscte-iul.pt/authors/tiago-fernandes/cv). 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 studies, and served in the directive board of the Portuguese Institute of International Relations (IPRI).  His most recent publications are Civil Society, Democracy, and Inequality: Cross-Regional Comparisons (1970s-2010s), Special Issue, Comparative Politics (2017) (co-edited); Memories and Movements. The Legacy of Democratic Transitions in Contemporary Anti-Austerity Protest (Oxford University Press, 2017); Late neoliberalism and its discontents: Comparing crises and movements in the European periphery (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2016) and Democracy, Institutions and Political Culture: Southern Europe, 1970s-2010s, Lisbon, Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation, 2019 (co-authored); Varieties of Democracy in Southern Europe, 1968-2016: A Comparison of France, Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Spain (Social Sciences Press, Lisbon, 2018) and Forty-Five Years of Democracy in Portugal: Achievements and Prospects, Lisbon, Portuguese Parliament, 2020 (co-edited). Together with Staffan Lindberg of the Varieties of Democracy Institute of the 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 coordinates 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 looks 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) and head of the Varieties of Democracy Regional Center for Southern Europe. 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.   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).