Social Affairs

Emeritus and Visiting Professor at the University of Louvain, where he held the Hoover Chair in Economic and Social Ethics from 1991 to 2016. Associate Member of Nuffield College, Oxford. Visiting Professor at Harvard (2004-2010); Oxford (2011-2015) and Robert Schuman Fellow at the European University Institute (Florence) (2016). Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Belgium and the British Academy, he is one of the founders of the Basic Income Earth Network, chairing its International Board.

He was born in Lisbon in 1975. He has a Bachelor’s degree from the School of Communication and Media Studies, he worked on Canal Q, owned by Produções Fictícias, and is currently a scriptwriter and works on the RTP3 programme Last One Out Turns Off the Light. He is in charge of Communication at Cinema São Jorge and was a Communication Consultant at Booktailors. He works as a freelance illustrator and writes books as if there were no tomorrow.

He is an associate professor at the Nova School of Business and Economics (Nova SBE) in Lisbon. He got his PhD in Economics from Stockholm University in Sweden, where he also taught between 2007 and 2014.
He taught at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. He worked as a researcher at the European Central Bank and was a fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute.
He carried out research at the Centre for Economics and Finance at the University of Porto until 2019. His research focuses on the interaction between micro-heterogeneity and macroeconomic dynamics, particularly on the topics of fiscal policy and optimal taxation.
He has published several papers in international scientific journals, such as the Journal of Monetary Economics or the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, and contributed to the second edition of the Handbook of Macroeconomics.

Last updated: April 2024

He has a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree in Contemporary History from Nova University Lisbon and a PhD in History of Education from the University of Lisbon. He has published work in the area of the History of Discoveries, the History of Women and the History of Education. He has been a teacher since 1987 and has been in charge of education since 2003. Contributes to the «Jornal de Letras», with texts on education, past, present or even future.

Last updated: December 2023

He has a PhD in Sociology and Social Policy, with a specialisation in Disability Studies, from the University of Leeds and a Master’s degree in Sociology and Social Policy from the University of Coimbra. Researcher and vice-president of the Scientific Council of the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra, where he teaches on the PhD programme. He coordinated and took part in the development of a number of research projects and is the author of several publications in the areas of disability policies, violence and disability, inclusion and citizenship rights, social movements and sexuality and intimate relations of people with disabilities.

Last updated: November 2023

He was born in Espinho in 1979. He writes for the Expresso, where he published his first report in 2001 and which he joined as coordinator of Revista magazine in 2011. He worked at the Público newspaper and with SIC and RTP, as well as publishing in several foreign newspapers, from the British The Guardian to the Spanish El Mundo. He interviewed Al Gore and Obama’s photographer, spoke to some of the best chefs in the world, covered Bolsonaro’s rise in Brazil and revealed a sexual harassment scandal involving former FIFA president, Sepp Blatter. His work has already won awards from the Portuguese Press Club, the Portuguese League Against Cancer, the European Best Cancer Reporter Award and the National Association of Portuguese Municipalities. He is the author of the books «Children of Chemotherapy», also published by FFMS, and «Chefs Without Reserves» (Clube do Autor).

He teaches economics and strategy at the London School of Economics and Political Science and researches areas including the impact of technology and management practices on aggregate economic variables such as wage distribution, productivity or economic growth. He also researches ways to prevent a new economic crisis in the eurozone. In this context, and with the «Euronomics» group of economists, he has been proposing solutions, such as European Safe Bonds – ESBies, which are being officially considered by the European Central Bank and the European Commission.

He is Professor of Economics at the European University Institute, Lead Researcher at the Centre for Economic Policy Studies and the Institute for the Study of Labour (IZA), Member of the European Economic Association and Honorary Member of the Spanish Economics Association, of which he was President in 2001. His primary research areas are econometric theory, labour economics and applied macroeconomics, on which he has published ten books and around 70 articles. Between 2003 and 2010, he was a member of the Economic Policy Analysis Group (GEPA) during the Romano Prodi and José Manuel Durão Barroso.presidencies of the European Commission.

A journalist, he was Director of News at RTP and TVI, simultaneously editing and presenting Telejornal (RTP) and Jornal das 8 (TVI). He began his career in radio and, in 1992, was part of the team that founded the first private television station in Portugal, SIC, where he presented Jornal da Noite. He taught at the Escola Superior de Comunicação Social and co-coordinated the Postgraduate Course in Journalism at ISCTE/Media Capital. At the invitation of the President of the Republic, he inaugurated the programme «Journalists in Belém Palace» in 2018.

With a PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Louvain, Jorge Vala was a Full Professor at ISCTE-IUL and is an Emeritus Researcher at the University of Lisbon ICS. His research initially focused on the learning of violence, then on conflicts between organisational groups, and then on the study of identity and feelings of justice and legitimacy associated with conflicts arising from racism, prejudice and migration.