Sandra Mateus is a sociologist with a PhD in Sociology from Iscte - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (2014). She is a researcher at CIES-Iscte and an assistant professor at Iscte, where she heads the Master's programme in Education and Society and is coordinator of the 1st year of the degree in Sociology. She is an elected member of the CIES Scientific Committee. In Portugal, she is currently coordinating the European project H:ouse (AMIF), centred on housing challenges in the integration of refugees (2024-2026), and the European project Space4Us (Erasmus+), on the social inclusion of young people in vulnerable situations (2022-2024). She is pursuing a research programme on the ways in which the identities and belonging of young people of mixed origin are created in transnational family contexts. She has researched and taught in the areas of education, migration, social inequalities and youth, with a particular focus on the children of immigrants. She has authored and co-authored several publications, communications and conferences. Her teaching experience includes curricular units on "Learning Society" and "Children of Immigrants and Education" on Iscte's MA in Education and Society, and other units such as "Object and Method of Sociology", "Sociology of Education", "Educational Policies", "Integration in Migratory Processes", and "Multicultural Mediation in Educational Contexts". She has also taught at the Lisbon School of Education (2011) and the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon (2005). She has been a trainer in various institutions and with different audiences, including teachers, social workers and animators. She was part of the national management team of the Escolhas Programme (2006-2008), coordinating the programme's communication, the area of children of immigrants and the training of local teams; and she was also part of the Informal Working Group for the Integration of Children of Immigrants, supported by ACIDI - High Commission for Immigration and Intercultural Dialogue, IP. At this Institute, she was also a member of the Training Centre for raising awareness about the reception and integration of immigrants. Between 2009 and 2010, he learnt and used Stand Up Comedy for the public dissemination of science, through his participation in the "Cientistas de Pé" project.

Cristina Roldão is a sociologist, a researcher at Iscte - University Institute of Lisbon, and an Adjunct Professor at the Setúbal School of Education (ESE-IPS). She is an active voice in the academic and public debate on racism and Blackness in Portuguese society. Her research has focused on the processes of school exclusion of Afro-descendants, as well as Black History in Portugal. In her teaching, she has developed pedagogical approaches to the deconstruction of Eurocentrism in school textbooks and “intercultural education”, and has been co-coordinating the Roadmap for an Antiracist Education at ESE-IPS since its foundation in 2019. She was part of the organizing committee of the 7th Afroeuropeans Conference (Lisbon, 2019), belongs to the Steering Committee of the recent Center for Black European Studies and the Atlantic (Carnegie Mellon University, 2023) and to the faculty team of Black Europe Summer School (2025). Cristina Roldão was a columnist for the newspaper Público (2022-2024) and a member of the Working Groups on the National Plan to Combat Racism (2021/22) and on the Collection of Ethnic-Racial Data in the 2021 Census (2018/19). She is co-editor of the 110th anniversary edition of the newspaper ‘O Negro’ (Lisbon, 2021), co-author of the book 'Tribuna Negra: Origins of the Black Movement in Portugal (1911-1933)' and a co-editor of Afroeuropeans: Identities, Racism, and Resistances (forthcoming on Routledge, July 2025).

Maria João Lima has a PhD in Sociology  by Iscte - University Institute of Lisbon. She holds a Master's degree in Ethnomusicology and a Bachelor's degree in Musicology (FCSH-UNL). She was a research assistant  at INET-MD-Instituto de Etnomusicologia Música e Dança (1995-2000) and at OAC - Cultural Activities Observatory (2001-2013). Her research is mainly focused on cultural policies, cultural audiences and cultural expressive practices. She is currently part of the research team of the Portuguese Observatory of Cultural Activities (https://www.opac.cies.iscte-iul.pt/).

Otávio Raposo is an integrated researcher at the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology (CIES-IUL), University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL), and an Invited Lecturer at the same University. He carries out research in the fields of urban studies, youth, segregation, art and migrations in Portugal and Brazil. He is currently addressing artistic practices and the civic engagement of young people from the outskirts of Lisbon, as well as the public politics addressed to them. He has made many several ethnographic films, including “Nu Bai. Lisbon’s Black Rap” (2007) and “At the Quinta with Kally” (2019).

  PhD in Sociology. Full Professor at ISCTE, where she has taught since 1993. She is currently a member of the Department of Social Research Methods at the School of Sociology and Public Policy and a researcher at the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology (CIES-Iscte). Her main areas of research have been: education and adult education; competences, literacy and reading practices; science and society; and research methodologies in the social sciences. She has coordinated and been part of several research projects funded by national and international agencies, private and public organisations. She is the author and co-author of several scientific publications including books, book chapters and articles in indexed journals. She has extensive teaching experience, having coordinated and taught courses in undergraduate, postgraduate, master's and doctoral programmes in the fields of sociology and data analysis in the social sciences.  She is currently the Director of Iscte's Doctoral Programme in Sociology, coordinator of the CIES ‘Education and Science’ Research Group, a member of Iscte's General Council, a member of the National Education Council, where she coordinates the Specialised Commission on ‘Democratisation and Educational Inequalities’, and a member of the Higher Statistics Council, where she chairs the Standing Section on Social Statistics.      

Pedro Abrantes is assistant professor at the Department of Social Sciences and Management, at Universidade Aberta, and invited professor of the Master's Proframme Education and Society, at Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), university where he completed his Graduation and PhD in Sociology. His main fields of expertise are education, social inequalities and life pathways. Throughout the last 15 years, he took part in several projects and activities of the Centro de Investigação e Estudos de Sociologia (CIES-IUL), including being member of the Board between 2006 and 2012. He was also lecturer at the Polytechnic Institutes of Santarém e Leiria, as well as at Universidade de Lisboa e at Universidad Iberoamericana (México). He was consultant in programmes held by the Portuguese Ministry of Education and by the Aga Khan Foundation, and visiting researcher at Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Espanha) and Centro de Investigación en Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (México). He is member of the Portuguese Society for Educational Sciences and the Portuguese Sociological Association, where he was coordinator of the Sociology of Education section and member of the Board. He was also formerly President of a Fair Trade Association and national representative of an european network. He was Advisor of the Minister of Education (2016-2020) and deputy director of the Directorate-General for Education and Science Statistics (2020-2022). Afterwards, he returned to Universidade Aberta, where he is member of the Centre for Global Studies and head of the Observatory of Graduates' Work and Life Pathways.

Sofia Gaspar (PhD in Sociology, Complutense University of Madrid, 2005) is Research Assistant at CIES-Iscte, Lisbon University Institute, Portugal. She has coordinated several projects on bi-national couples, transnational families and Chinese immigrants, and she has vastly published on this field. My recent publications include the co-edition of the books The Presence of China and the Chinese Diaspora in Portugal and Portuguese-Speaking Territories (2021, Brill) and Southeast Asian Migration: People on the Move in Search of Work, Refuge and Belonging (Sussex Academic Press, 2015). I have also published several papers in peer-review journals (International Migration; Population, Space and Place; Journal of Ethnics and Migration Studies; Journal of Chinese Overseas; Diaspora, Indigenous and Minority Education; Global Networks; Portuguese Journal of Social Science). Since January 2023, she is the local coordinator of the project AspirE, "Decision making of aspiring (re)migrants to/within the EU: The case of labour market-leading migrations from Asia", on the scope of HORIZON-CL2-2022-TRANSFORMATIONS-01).  She is Member of the Organizing Committee of the Thematic Section Migrations, Ethnicity and Racism of the Portuguese Sociological Association (APS), and she is co-organizing the workshops Meetings on Chinese Studies and Seminar of Cultural Diversity in Contemporary Families, both at Cies-Iscte.  She is also member of several international networks: CHERN - China in Europe Research Network (COST Action), CERPE - China Europe Platform on Migration, PRIMOB - Privileged Mobilities: Local Impacts, Belonging and Citizenship (IMISCOE), DIVCULT - Superdiversity, Migration and Cultural Change (IMISCOE) and Lifestyle Migration Hub. Her current research activity is focused on the privileged migrations, investment mobilities, social integration of immigrants' descendants, particularly on the Chinese community in Portugal and Europe.

Susana da Cruz Martins, PhD in Sociology. She is an associate professor at Iscte - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa and a researcher at the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology (CIES) in the Department of Political Science and Public Policy. She is co-coordinator of the Education and Science Research Group at CIES-Iscte. She is a member of the Inequalities Observatory and Director of the Master's Degree in School Administration (at ESPP, Iscte). She was awarded a post-doctoral scholarship by the Foundation for Science and Technology and a Gulbenkian Professorship by the F. C. Gulbenkian. She has participated in and coordinated national and international research projects. Of particular note is the national coordination (in Portugal) of the European project EUROSTUDENT - Social and Economic Conditions of Student Life In Europe (II, III, VI, and VII) and the Portuguese external evaluation of the Global Schools2030 Programme (in Portugal), implemented by the Aga Khan Foundation. She is the author of several national and international publications, mainly in the areas of education and higher education policies, comparative education systems, school performance and success, evaluation of public policies and social inequalities.

Teresa Seabra (teresa.seabra@iscte-iul.pt) graduated in Pedagogy (1980) and Sociology (1989), master in Sociology (1995) and PhD in Sociology (2008). Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, ISCTE-IUL. Directed Master's Degree in Education and Society between 2002 and 2023. Researcher at the Center for Research and Sociology Studies at the University Institute of Lisbon (CIES-IUL) since 1993. Main fields of research: social inequalities in education; descendants of immigrants in school; family education; the school effect on school outcomes. Author and co-author of several articles in scientific journals, chapters of books and books. Among the publications, we highlight the book Adaptation and Adversity: the school performance of students of Indian and Cape Verdean origin in basic education, published in 2010 by the Institute of Social Sciences (ICS-UL). Member of the Advisory Board of the Journal of Sociology of Education of the Portuguese Association of Sociology (APS).

Tiago Lapa is an assistant professor and researcher at CIES-IUL, in the area of communication, in the Department of Sociology of the School of Sociology and Public Policy of ISCTE - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa. Coordinates and / or teaches curricular units in the fields of digital sociology, communication and online methods of inquiry. He has around 10 years of experience in academic teaching in the area of sociology and communication sciences, having taught curricular units such as Sociology of Communication, Communication Theories and Communication Skills at ISCTE-IUL, but also in other national institutions, such as the ESECS of Polytechnic Institute of Leiria and the European University - Portugal. It is also in this area that he has carried out supervisions of master and doctoral studies, collaborated as a reviewer in publications and participates in COST and Erasmus + programs and in international scientific networks such as the World Internet Project and the European Media Coach Initiative, related to Internet studies , the digital divide and new media literacy. He also belongs to the advisory council of the Safe Internet Center of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). His scientific work has been published in the form of books, chapters and articles in indexed journals of international circulation.