Professor Nuno Nunes, Iscte-University Institute of Lisbon Key-Expertise: inequality, collective action, well-being, development, elites, and digital society. Homepage: https://ciencia.iscte-iul.pt/authors/nuno-nunes/cv With a Ph.D. in Sociology (since 2011), my thesis was about Social Inequalities and Collective Action in Europe. First and after my doctorate, I was a Researcher at the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology (CIES-Iscte), but since 2018 I have also become Professor at Iscte-University Institute of Lisbon, one of the most prestigious Portuguese universities. Currently, I am teaching “Contemporary Social Inequalities”, “Sociology of Development”, “Sociology of Globalisation”, “Work, Organisations and Technology”, and “Introduction to Sociology”. I have been mainly working on the themes of inequality, class, collective action, and well-being. Today's world is much better understood from the perspective of social inequalities, which continue to decisively mark the lives of people, institutions, and societies. My scientific objectives are precisely to contribute to the strengthening of theoretical, analytical, and empirical instruments capable of understanding their multidimensionality, mechanisms, and intersections. There are multiple social phenomena influenced by inequalities, social classes, and social stratification processes and it is in this sense that I have developed my work, seeking to understand how social inequalities influence collective action and the well-being of citizens. My research has followed the approach that inequality processes are increasingly global, but that national and intra-national scales remain equally relevant. I have published 20 articles, 5 Books, 27 Book Chapters, 13 Working Papers, and 8 Proceedings of Scientific Meetings, 28 of them with internationally recognized scope. My articles have appeared in European Societies, Journal of Civil Society, Education Sciences, Sensors, Portuguese Journal of Social Science, Sociologia, Problemas e Práticas, European Journal of Engineering and Formal Sciences, Sociologia On Line, and Sociologia. I am participating or have participated in 25 research projects, 9 of them international, and 13 under my coordination (3 national coordination of international projects and 10 national projects). My research has been funded by FCT – Foundation of Science and Technology, the European Union (Horizon Europe and Horizon 2020), the Spanish National Research Council, Portuguese foundations, Portuguese municipalities, and NGOs. I have participated in 142 conferences, 63 international and 44 as a keynote speaker.  I have organized 27 scientific events, 10 of them international. I belong to the international network “International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies”. Between 2016-2023, I was the team coordinator in charge of the National Research Stream ‘Social Classes, Inequalities, and Public Policies’ of the Portuguese Sociological Association (APS). Currently, I supervise Ph.D. and master thesis on the subjects of social inequalities, class, elites, collective action, social cohesion, welfare, and digital divides.  I am a National Adviser for Horizon Europe, Coordinator of the Thematic Line “Digital Transformation” of the SocioDigital Lab for Public Policy, Member of the General Council of Iscte and the Editorial Board of “Sociologia, Problemas e Práticas” [Sociology, Problems, and Practices], and Subdirector of the Publisher “Mundos Sociais” [Social Worlds].

Filipa Pinho is a sociologist and holds a PhD degree in sociology awarded by Iscte-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa. Her research interests have focused mainly on international migration (Portuguese emigration and the return of migrants, Brazilian migration to Portugal, migration policies, refugees) youth and, lately, also housing (she collaborates with the LxHabidata project). Since the 2019/2020 academic year, she has been a visiting assistant professor at the School of Sociology and Public Policy (ESPP), and is currently a researcher at CIES, Iscte. She works as an independent researcher/consultant on a variety of projects. Some recent examples: Education & Job Market Research (2024), Aga Khan Foundation; Lisbon Municipal Plan for the Integration of Migrants 2023-2026 (2024), DDS/CML; Empreender 2020 - Return of a Prepared Generation (2017), AEP Foundation; Integration and political participation of immigrants (2015), European Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA); Support and Opposition to Migration in a Comparative Perspective (2017), various projects at IPPS-Iscte and PPLL, Lda (2017). Between January 2019 and September 2021, she was a post-doctoral researcher at CES Coimbra, in the project Experiences and Expectations of Return of New Portuguese Emigrants: Reintegration and Mobilities, in which CIES also participated.She was an invited assistant researcher on the PandPAS and Below 10 projects at CIES_Iscte in 2018. Previously, she was the executive coordinator of the Emigration Observatory from its foundation in January 2009 until 2013. She was a project coordinator and researcher at the International Organisation for Migration (in 2004 and 2014).She also worked for several years in national and international market research companies, as a market researcher.

João C. Ferreira is Assistant Professor with habilitation at ISCTE-IUL. He graduated in Physics from the Technical University of Lisbon (UTL / IST), Portugal, received an MSc in Telecommunications and a PhD in Computer Engineering from UTL / IST and a second PhD in Industrial Engineering at the University of Minho. His research interests are in: data science, Text Mining, IoT, Blockchain AI, and AI application to health, energy, transportation, Electric Vehicle, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and sustainable mobility systems. He has authored more than 250 papers in computer science. He has executed more than 40 projects (6 as PI), more than 200 scientific paper reviews and more than 30 scientific project evaluations. IEEE CIS Chair 2016-2018 and current vice-chair of IEEE Blockchain PT, CIS PT chapter and Bruxels AI and robotics.  Main organizer of international conferences such as: OAIR 2013, INTSYS from 2018 to 2022. IEEE senior member since 2015. Guest Editor and topic editor of MDPI in the topics of energies, electronics and Sensors. President of the IEEE CIS in PT (2017-2018). Author of a patent in the area of Edge Computer in a monitoring system for fishing vessels Coordinator of the Master of Decision Support Systems, Professional Master for the Digitalization of Business and of the summer (smart cities) and winter (IoT Systems and Blockchain) schools. Vice-Chair Computational Intelligence Society and IEEE Blockchain in Portugal and Industry Ambassador in Portugal   He is participating in the following projects - H2020 Infrastress, Sparta, ENSURECEC, EFFECTOR, MARISA, ANDANTE, Interreg Block4Coop, BALCAT, AIM Health, PT2020 Monitoring persistent track and Multicam and the Digital Demo, EEagrants Fish2fork (PI) and Social IoT (PI)

João Carvalho is a PhD in Politics, working as an Assistant Researcher in CIES-Iscte and an Invited Professor at the Escola de Tecnologias Digitais Aplicadas, where he teaches Contemporary Political Philosophy. My research interests encompass the politics of international migration and the far-right. My authored and co-authored research has been published in journals such as: European Journal of Political Research, Journal of Common Market Studies, Party Politics, Government and Opposition, Parliamentary Affairs, Citizenship Studies, etc. . Lastly, I like to disseminate contents of political science to wider audiences.  

I’ve studied physics and mathematics for a while at the at the University of Lisbon, but ended up graduating in Antropology, in 1996, at the Nova University of Lisbon. Then I began working as an IT consultant for a printing company. In 2007, I left the private sector and started teaching Mathematics at the Higher School for Elementary Teachers Maria Ulrich, where I stayed for seven years. In 2014, I got my doctoral degree in Philosophy of Contemporary Thought, at the University Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, with a thesis about volition and human intelligence simulation, using AI. In 2015, I joined the Centre for the Philosophy of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (CFCUL, now closed), where I came up with the wave-memory interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and started working on the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence, focusing on the social aspects of AI. Recently (2022, 2024) I have co-organized the first and the second Portuguese Symposiums in Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence, participated in public events and given interviews to the media about AI and society. Presently, I am a Professor in the ISCTE-Sintra School of Digital Technologies, where I teach about the societal and ethical impacts of digital technologies and AI on contemporary societies. My actual interests (and concerns) are AI surveillance and human freedom impact, political manipulation using disinformation, virtual and augmented reality design and artificial consciousness.

Margarida Santos is a guest assistant professor at Iscte-Sintra in the fields of Health Psychology and Educational Psychology. She is the Director of the Bachelor's Degree in Digital Technologies and Health, the Coordinator of the Master's Degree in Digital Transformation Management in the Health Sector, as part of the international project ManagiDITH coordinated by Iscte, and she is a member of the Specialized Commission on Pedagogical Affairs at Iscte-Sintra. Since 2015, she has been coordinating a research-action project in the health sector, promoting the engagement of individuals with illnesses and their representatives in decision-making processes in healthcare. This project is responsible for the Charter for Public Participation in Health (Law No. 108/2019, September 9). With a Ph.D. in Psychology, a Master's degree in Social and Organizational Psychology, and a Bachelor's degree in Psychology from Iscte-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, her research has focused on decision-making processes and public participation, especially in the field of public policies (e.g., municipal participatory budgeting). She is the author or co-author of more than 20 scientific publications in this domain.

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.

I am a Researcher at the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology (CIES-Iscte) since 2020 and Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Economy (since 2021) and the School of Applied Digital Technologies (since 2024) at Iscte – University Institute of Lisbon. I hold a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge (2019). My dissertation was awarded the Portuguese Political Science Association Prize for Best Dissertation (2022) and published by Amsterdam University Press as Contesting Austerity: Social Movements and the Left in Portugal and Spain (2022), which received the João Ferreira de Almeida Prize (2024). I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence (2019–2020), and held visiting positions at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (2015–2016, 2023), Scuola Normale Superiore (2016), University of York (2022), and University of Florence (2024). In 2023, I was the FLAD Visiting Professor at Brown University. My research focuses on collective action and contemporary politics, particularly social movements, political parties, and their interactions. In my book Contesting Austerity and in my article in European Societies (2025), I examined how processes of backstage partyisation shaped relations between parties and movements during the austerity period in Portugal and Spain. I analyse the processes through which political contention emerges, diffuses, and becomes institutionalised, exploring both the public dimension of protest and its articulation with parties and institutions. I have also studied transnational dynamics and mobilisations around housing, climate action, and anti-austerity politics. Methodologically, I mobilise a range of qualitative and quantitative approaches, from systematic protest event analysis to comparative methods and case studies, as well as I employ computational methods for large-scale data collection and analysis. I have also advanced methodological innovations which extends the idea of backstage by incorporating different forms of involvement and interaction among collective actors. Between 2022 and 2025, I was co-chair of the Research Network on Social Movements of the Council of European Studies and co-organised several international conferences. I am also engaged in public debates and media commentary. My analyses have appeared in Le Monde Diplomatique (Portugal), Expresso, Público, ECO, Le Soir (Belgium), as well as in international outlets such as ECPR The Loop and the LSE EUROPP blog. My work has been published in journals such as European Societies, Environmental Science & Policy, Housing Studies, Review of African Political Economy, Social Movement Studies, Environmental Sociology and Religion, State & Society. I have also contributed to the Oxford Handbook of Climate Action (2025) and the Handbook of Research Methods and Applications for Social Movements (2024). You can find more about my work here.  

António Filipe Fonseca is an engineer and complexity sciences researcher. He graduated in Electronics and Telecommunications from IST in Lisbon and holds a Master's degree and a PhD in Complex Systems Sciences from ISCTE/IUL and Faculdade de Ciências de Lisboa. His main research interests are complex social systems, information dynamics and modelling and simulation of complex systems. He worked in several private companies as an engineer before joining the public service as an IT expert. Currentlys is Assistant professor in ISCTE Sintra and Integrated Researcher  at ISTAR/ISCTE -IUL Lisbon.