Social Affairs

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.

The eldest son of Olof Palme, former prime minister of Sweden, he is a sociologist and Professor of Political Science at Uppsala University, where he also directs the Centre for Labour Studies. He specialises in social policies from a comparative perspective, with an emphasis on the Swedish pension model, and is also an expert with a solid empirical basis on the social and economic efficiency of public pension systems. He has carried out several studies on the welfare state as an equality strategy, European welfare policies, income redistribution and mixed (public-private) social protection systems, ageing societies, social investment and migration. Responsible for research projects focusing on the effects of the global financial crisis, with a special focus on the political and social relations between European countries, he has participated in various Swedish government commissions and was CEO of the Institute for Futures Studies in Copenhagen. He is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, Chairman of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee "Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy", Chairman of the Migration Studies Delegation (Delmi) and a member of UNRISD (UN Research Institute for Social Development). In 2017, he was appointed by the Secretary-General of the UN to head the Swedish Institute for Social Research, a position he currently holds.

As well as being a technology visionary and a pioneer of «wikis» (a set of web pages designed to allow anyone to contribute and change content), he is best known as the Founder of Wikipedia, an international, free-content Internet encyclopaedia, and of the Wikimedia Foundation. He is also the founder of WikiTribune, a revolutionary ad-free news platform that produces fact-based journalism, and co-founder of Wikia, a free private web hosting service that he created in 2004. His work with Wikipedia, which has become the world's largest encyclopaedia, led to him being named by Time magazine as one of the «100 Most Influential People» in 2006, in the «Scientists and Thinkers» category.

Professor of Economics at Sciences Po University in Paris and the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, he holds the Tommaso Padoa Schioppa Chair at the European University Institute in Florence and is an Honorary Mercator Member at Bruegel, the Brussels-based economic think tank. His publications include numerous books and articles on economic policy and European politics. He was Director of Programme and Ideas for Emmanuel Macron's presidential campaign (2017) and Commissioner General for the Strategy of France (2013-16), the government's think tank, while in 2005 he founded the Bruegel Institute, which he directed until 2013.

He is one of the world's most prominent economic historians. His journey has taken him to Scotland to the California sunshine, stopping off at King's College, Cambridge and Harvard, as well as Stanford and Michigan. He is Professor of Economics at UC-Davis, Chairman of the Steering Committee of the All-UC Economic History Group and Associate of the Centre for Poverty Research at UC-Davis.

A journalist with over 20 years' experience, she presents a political affairs programme on the American television channel TRT World and is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. She began her career as a political correspondent for a leading Middle Eastern newspaper based in the UK. She later joined the Aljazeera television channel in NY as Editor-in-Chief, where she covered the September 11 attacks. She was a journalist on the war scenes in Iraq and Afghanistan following the US invasion in 2003. She conducted in-depth interviews with senior US officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell. HER work included following the UN extensively, covering the Security Council and the General Assembly. For the UN, she travelled with Kofi Annan throughout the Middle East and Africa, with whom she carried out several in-depth interviews during his 10-year tenure. Her experience as a political journalist includes interviews with various heads of state and government, including Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Israeli President Shimon Peres, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

She is best known for her roles in «Slumdog Millionaire» (2008), for which she was nominated for a BAFTA award for Best Supporting Actress, and Planet of the Apes (2011). Before her acting career, she studied English literature, psychology and economics at St. Xavier's College in Bombay and worked as a model. In addition to her film work, especially in Hollywood productions, she promotes humanitarian causes around the world and is especially dedicated to women's rights and living conditions. She is a global ambassador for Plan International's «Because I AM a Girl» programme, which promotes gender equality to lift millions of girls out of poverty, and also collaborates with the NGO We Do It Together, which funds films and documentaries focused on women's empowerment.

She has a Bachelor’s degree in Communication and believes that the Público was her school of journalism. She spent 14 years in the international politics section exploring, Asia in particular. What does a school for migrant children in Beijing have in common with a middle-class family in Tokyo? A writer in Goa looking for their identity in the largest slum in Mumbai? The lowering the Portuguese flag in Macao and a trip through Thai cuisine? Nothing and a lot. For Francisca Gorjão Henriques, all the reports were lessons on how each place is multiple. She believes that these years helped her in the steps that followed. She left the Público newspaper after 20 years to devote herself to the Loaf by Loaf Association, which promotes the integration of refugees from the Middle East. But she did not leave journalism, continuing to work as a freelancer, reporting and doing fixer work.