Social Affairs

Winner of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, Leymah Roberta Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist, social worker and defender of women's rights.
She was awarded the Nobel Prize for her peaceful contribution to ending the civil wars taking place in Liberia until 2003. She is the founder and current president of the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa (GPFA).
She is executive director of the Women, Peace and Security Program at the Earth Institute of Columbia University in New York, USA. She is co-founder and former executive director of the Women Peace and Security Network Africa (WIPSEN-A) and founding member and former coordinator of the Women in Peacebuilding Network in Liberia (WIPNET).
She collaborates with the UN as a member of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) unit and on the UN High-Level Advisory Board on Mediation. She is a member of many organisations, including the World Refugee Council (WRC) and the Network of African Women Leaders for Reproductive Health and Family Planning.

Last updated: April 2022

He is a coordinating researcher at the University of Lisbon Institute of Social Sciences and professor of Political Science at Universidade Lusófona. He was a visiting professor at Stanford (1993), Georgetown (2004) and an associate member St Antony's College, Oxford (1995).
He was also Senior Visiting Researcher at Princeton (1996), Berkeley (2000 and 2010) and NYU (2017). He was president of the Portuguese Political Science Association. His research interests include authoritarianism, democratisation and transactional justice, political elites and the comparative study of political change.
His many published works include «Political Institutions and Democracy in Portugal: Assessing the Impact of the Eurocrisis» (Co-org. 2019) and «Technocratic Ministers and Political Leadership in European Democracies» (Co-org. 2018).

Last updated: January 2023

Born in 1947, he graduated in Philosophy from the University of Lisbon and led several Ministries in different governments (Internal Affairs, National Defense and Foreign Affairs). He was Member of Parliament from 1975 to 2011, were he held office as Speaker, consequently becoming a member of the Council of State. Presently, he is a member of the Supervisory Board of the Lisbon University and of the Strategy Board of the Political Studies Institute of the Lisbon Catholic University. Member of the Supervisory Board of the Military University Institute and of the High Council of the Navy’s Centre for Strategic Studies. He also belongs to the Aspen Ministers Forum. In addition, he is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Novo Banco Azores and Chairman of the Supervisory Board for the electronic newspaper Observador. He is Senior Strategic Counsel at Albright Stonebridge Group. He was awarded several Portuguese and foreign decorations. He received the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of the Azores and is Chancellor of the Ancient Portuguese Military Orders.

Last updated: september 2022

Director of Pordata and member of the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos. She holds a PhD in Statistics and Computing and graduated in Mathematics, Luísa Loura is a professor and researcher at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon. She was director of the Directorate-General for Education and Science Statistics. As a researcher, she published works in the areas of extreme theory, stochastic processes, biostatistics and the teaching of statistics.

Director of publications and member of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee, António Araújo was born in Lisbon in 1966. He obtained a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in law at the University of Lisbon and holds a PhD in contemporary history from the Catholic University of Portugal. He was a teacher at the Faculty of Law and teaches now at NOVA FCSH. He is adviser to the Constitutional Court, in unpaid leave, and was consultant to the President of the Republic for political affairs. He is the author of several books and articles in political science, constitutional law and contemporary history. He represents FFMS on the Board of the Portuguese Foundation Center.

She has a PhD in Sociology: Labour relations, social inequalities and trade unionism (FEUC, 2019), a Master's degree in Sociology (ISCTE, 2011) and a Bachelor's degree in Psychology (University of Minho, 1998). She has been an integrated researcher at DINÂMIA'CET-ISCTE since 2013 and has worked with the Interdisciplinary Centre for Social Sciences (CICS.Nova.UAçores and CICS.UAc) since 2019. She has addressed topics such as: (un)employment, conflict and collective action; temporary work and collective bargaining; participatory reflection with marginalised groups; (under)valuation of work; poverty and inequalities; gender and immigration.

Last updated: April 2021

He has a PhD in Economics from Sciences Po Paris. He was Secretary of State for Social Security and Secretary of State for Industry, Commerce and Services. He chaired the Board of Directors of the Institute of Financial and Property Management at the Ministry of Justice and the Assessment Committees of Proposals for Hospitals under Private Public Partnership System in Braga, Cascais, Loures and Vila Franca de Xira. He was Chairman of the Board of Directors of the INATEL Foundation and professor at the School of Economics and Management.

Last updated: November 2023

She holds a PhD in Sociology with a thesis on religious pluralism in Portuguese society and is a professor at the University of Porto School of Arts and Humanities.
She is a member of the executive committee of the Sociology department at this school and a researcher at the university, taking part in projects such as the EUREL project, which provides sociological and legal data on religion in Europe.
She studies the revitalisation of local churches in Europe, particularly in Portugal, and online religious expression.
She also researches issues related to legislation on religious freedom, new forms of religion and Catholicism in Portugal, religious minorities and Protestant and evangelical communities.
She has lectured at Uppsala University, Sweden, and was elected a member of the Council of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion.

Last updated: December 2018

He currently works as an Associate Professor in the Sociology Department of the University of Minho Institute of Social Sciences and is also an integrated researcher at CICS.Nova at the University of Minho.
Recently, he was part of the research team for the project "Poverty in Portugal: Trajectories and daily life", funded by Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos and coordinated by Fernando Diogo (University of the Azores).
Capitalism and development, urban issues such as housing and lifestyles and academic success are some of his main research topics, on which he has published several books and articles in national and foreign magazines.
He has a PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, and an aggregate degree in Sociology from Nova University Lisbon.

Last updated: October 2021

Researcher at Queen Mary University of London (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoc Fellowship) and Assistant Professor at ISEG. He holds a PhD in Economics from Nova SBE, did part of his research at Harvard (FCT-Fulbright scholarship) and completed the Advanced Studies Programme at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. His research interests include the evaluation of public policies. He has published, among others, in the European Economic Review, the Journal of Urban Economics and the Journal of Economic Geography. He was the scientific advisor for the documentary "Portugal, uma casa para todos" and is one of the authors of the FFMS study "The Real Estate Market in Portugal".

Last updated: October 2023