Economy

Ed Conway is a writer and broadcaster. He is the Economics and Data Editor of Sky News and the author of a number of books including the award-winning bestseller «Material World», an Economist and Sunday Times Book of the Year. «Material World» was shortlisted for a host of awards, including the «Financial Times»/Schroders Book of the Year and British Academy Prize. It was the winner of the Handelsblatt/Goldman Sachs German Business Book Award and the Galileo Prize for scientific literature (Italy). Ed Conway has won numerous awards for his television and newspaper journalism, most recently the 2024 London Press Club Business Journalist of the Year, and has written for various publications, including «The New York Times», the «Times of London» and the «New Statesman». He was educated at Oxford and Harvard. He lives in London.

Last update: march 2026

Director at the Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs (ECFIN) at the European Commission. She oversees the work on economic surveillance and policy coordination for the economies of 9 Member States which includes monitoring, analysing, and forecasting their economic and fiscal developments.
She is also the lead negotiator for these Member States in the context of the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Facility.
Before that, she headed the ECFIN Unit dealing with competitiveness and structural reforms.
Isabel started her career as a scholar and researcher holding several positions at the Catholique University of Louvain (UCL) and at the University of Lille.
She holds a Ph.D in Economics and has a solid publication record in the areas of game theory, industrial economics and entrepreneurship which target theoretical and analytical questions as well as policy-design ones.

Last update: march 2026

Miguel Pimenta has worked at the Institute for Nature Conservation and in the Peneda-Gerês National Park, as well as other institutions. He has written several works in this area, published both nationally and internationally, one of the most important being «Atlas das Aves do Parque Nacional da Peneda-Gerês» (1996) (Atlas of Birds in the Peneda-Gerês National Park).
He is currently working on the historical reconstruction of the fauna of Portugal, using historical and cultural sources, and he is the co-author of the books «The Brown Bear in Portugal: A Story of Extinction» (2017) and «Feras e Homens: A fauna no Portugal medieval (2022)» (Man and Beast: The Fauna of Medieval Portugal).

Last updated: December 2025

She holds a PhD in Tourism, a MA in Chinese Studies (Business and International Relations) and a BSc in Tourism Management and Planning from the University of Aveiro, where she is assistant professor, at the Department of Economics, Management and Industrial Engineering, holding the positions of director of the master in Tourism Management and Planning and Coordinator of international mobility (Erasmus Program) for tourism studies.
She is a member of the research unit ‘Governance, Competitiveness and Public Policies’ of the University of Aveiro; and a founding member of the Observatory of China and the Portuguese Institute of Sinology.
She is also member of the editorial, scientific and review boards of a few academic national and international journals.
She has authored and co-authored several national and international papers and communications on tourism development, networks, tourism in China and Goa (India), gender and tourism, and internationalization of the tourism economy.

Last updated: november 2025

Eduardo Brito-Henriques holds a PhD in Human Geography and is associate professor with habilitation at the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning of the University of Lisbon (Instituto de Geografia e Ordenamento do Território da Universidade de Lisboa, IGOT-ULisboa).
He is a researcher at the Centre for Geographical Studies (Centro de Estudos Geográficos), where he coordinates the PhD in Tourism and leads the TERRITUR – Tourism, Heritage & Space (TERRITUR – Turismo, Património e Território) research group.
His work focuses on sustainable tourism, cultural geography and urban studies.
He also serves on the board of the Tourism Commission of the International Geographical Union.
His research has been published in various journals, including Tourism Geographies, Cities, Urban Geography, Cultural Geographies and the International Journal of Tourism Research.

Last updated: October 2025

Gonzalo Escribano heads the Energy and Climate Programme at the Elcano Royal Institute. He is also a full Professor of Applied Economics at the UNED.
He has a PhD in Economics from Madrid’s Complutense University, he has been a visiting researcher at Florida State University and the Autonomous University of Madrid and he is an associate researcher at the Centro Español de Relaciones Internacionales (Fundación Ortega y Gasset).

Last updated: july 2025

Fellow in the Energy and Climate Programme at the Elcano Royal Institute.
He has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Navarra and a master’s degree from Sciences Po Paris.
Prior to joining Elcano, Ignacio worked in the energy sector and was affiliated with the Energy and Climate Centre at Institut Français des Relations Internationales (IFRI).

Last updated: july 2025

João Fachada currently works as a researcher and independent consultant for IN+ Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research focusing on policies for the climate and energy transitions.
He has worked on topics such as energy, the climate and public sector modernisation, both as a consultant at Deloitte and within the Economic Policies Unit of the European Parliamentary Research Service. He also served as an advisor to the Secretary of State for Energy and the Climate in Portugal.
João has a bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Coimbra and a master’s degree in Economics, with a focus on public policy, from Nova School of Business and Economics.

Last updated: july 2025