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

She is Associate Professor at ISEG – Lisbon School of Economics and Management, University of Lisbon, where she obtained her PhD in Economic and Organisational Sociology and coordinated the «Break Even» project (2014-2016), focused on promoting gender equality in companies.
She is currently coordinating the project «Women on Boards: An Integrative Approach», funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education (MCTES).
She is a PhD researcher at the Centre for Research in Economic and Organisational Sociology, where she coordinates the Organisations, Work, Employment and Gender research line.
She was President of the Commission for Citizenship and Gender Equality in 2010, a body to which she remains attached as a member of the advisory board in her capacity as an expert in women's rights, non-discrimination and citizenship.
She coordinated the European Sociological Association’s research network «Gender Relations in the Labour Market and the Welfare State» and remains a member of the network's scientific committee. She has served on the board of the European Institute for Gender Equality, the European Union's High-Level Group on Gender Mainstreaming and the Economic and Social Council.

Last updated: February 2019

She has a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and enjoys being alive so much that she finds herself thinking of death quite frequently. Over the years, she has read a lot about the subject, which continues to intrigue her. She also has many other interests, ranging from literary translation to traditional typography. This is her fourth book, with other books in the works.

Last updated: October 2018

She has a PhD in Contemporary History and is a researcher at ICS-UL – the University of Lisbon Institute of Social Sciences. She works on the Estado Novo and is currently studying the association between architecture and politics, looking for analogies and connections between Salazarism and other inter-war dictatorships. At the same time, she has devoted herself to archive work and is responsible for the Social History Archive at ICS-UL.

Last updated: February 2019

She was born in Lisbon, where she got her Bachelor’s degree in Law, and she has worked in journalism for 25 years. She held the position of Society Editor and Lead Reporter, did film reviews and a weekly chronicle and she founded and managed the Cinema Final Cut website. She has been on the panel of judges at contests organised by ICA, which also funded three of her scripts. She made her début as a novelist with «What Matter the Fury of the Sea» (Teorema) a work that unanimously won the APE/DGLAB2013 Novel and Novella Grand Prize. Her second novel «You Can’t Live in a Cat's Eyes» (Teorema), a finalist in the Oceans Prize, won the Manuel de Boaventura Literary Prize and, again, APE/DGLAB the Novel and Novella Grand Prize 2016, thus entering the small group of Portuguese novelists to have been twice honoured. «Small Domestic Delusions» (Relógio d’Água), a collection of short stories, won the Camilo Castelo Branco/APE Short Story and Novel Award. Her latest novel «The Gesture You Make to Protect Your Head» (Relógio de Água) is a finalist candidate for the Oceans Award. She published a set of stories about war in July 2021: «Maps of Poorly Situated Places». She is the author of the cultural podcast Gross Domestic Happiness by Lisbon Municipal Council.

Last updated: February 2023

Lead Researcher with a degree in sociology at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, where she coordinates the «LIFE» research group and directs the journal «Análise Social». Her work focuses on sexualities and citizenship, social inequalities and the intersections between gender positions, in addition to areas such as critical masculinity studies.
She has a PhD from ISCTE and is Visiting Associate Professor in the university’s Department of Sociology. She also teaches on several doctoral programmes at ICS and the University of Lisbon: The Interuniversity Doctoral Programme in Sociology and the Doctoral Programme in Gender Studies.
She is a regular member of the European Research Council’s (ERC) evaluation panels.
She has published various academic articles. She is the co-author of two books and author of «The Sexuality of the Portuguese», published by the Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos.

He has a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from ISEG-Lisbon School of Economics and Management. He was a member of the technical staff at the National Statistics Institute and the Strategy and Planning Office at the Ministry of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security, where he is currently an advisor. He carries out research in the areas of social security, poverty and inequalities and is part of the national team responsible for implementing the EUROMOD international microsimulation model. He is also the man behind the blog Buracos na Estrada (Potholes in the Road), devoted to topics such as social protection, social security and income distribution.

Last updated: March 2022

She has a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics in Probability and Statistics from the School of Sciences and a postgraduate degree in Information Management Analysis from Nova Information Management School. She is a senior member of the Strategy and Planning Office at the Ministry of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security. Her research interests focus on areas related to social protection systems and the effects of public policies.

Last updated: March 2022

She holds a PhD in Geography and Spatial Planning and she is a principal investigator at the Centre for Geographical Studies and a professor at the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning at the University of Lisbon. Her interests focus on sustainable urban development, regional, urban and local planning, urban geography and the evaluation of public policies. She has taught Public Policy Assessment Methodologies and Spatial Planning on undergraduate and Master’s degree courses.

Last updated: November 2023