Culture

He works as a lecturer at the University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE-IUL) and as a researcher at the Centre for International Studies (CEI). He specialises in democracy, social movements and civil society.
He co-directs the «Varieties of Democracy in Southern Europe» project, which studies the causes and consequences of democratisation in Southern Europe from 1960 to the present. He also coordinates the Portuguese team on the «Disobedient Democracy» project, which analyses the causes and patterns of protest in the Southwest and Southeast of Europe.
For 20 years, he taught at the Nova University Lisbon, where he also headed the Political Studies department and served on the Board of the Portuguese Institute of International Relations (IPRI).
He has dozens of publications in indexed journals and has written books such as «A Sociedade Civil», published by Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos.

Last updated: March 2021

He has worked as a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Federal University of Ouro Preto, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil since 2007. He is the director of the electronic magazine «Criticism on the Net» and has written a number of books, including «Philosophy Live», «Naturalised Essentialism», «All the Dreams of the World and Other Essays», «Elementary Logic: Reasoning, Language and Reality» and «The Existence of God: The Essential». He also writes philosophy books for secondary education.
He is a founding member of the Centre for the Teaching of Philosophy at the Portuguese Society of Philosophy.
He has a PhD in Philosophy from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Lisbon School of Arts and Humanities, he has a Master’s degree in Philosophy of Language and Consciousness from the same university and he is a PhD student of Philosophy at King’s College London, UK – where he taught Logic and Ethics.

He has a PhD in Biochemistry from Nova University Lisbon (UNL), and has devoted himself to science communication for 27 years. Between 2015 and 2019, he managed Ciência Viva – National Agency for Scientific and Technological Culture, whose mission is to promote experimental science education and scientific dissemination. During these four years he also coordinated the GPS – Global Portuguese Scientists – project, a social media network that tells us where Portuguese scientists emigrated to and the type of scientific research they are doing outside Portugal. He wrote books such as «Pseudoscience» and «Portuguese Scientists», both published by Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos. He has created several plays and television programmes on scientific topics. He won the «Young Chemicals» and «Green Ideas» awards in 2010. He was the author of Public Enemy and a science journalist at the Público newspaper, a publication he continues to work with as a columnist. He is co-commissioner of the Science and Education Month for Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos.

Last updated: May 2020

She graduated in Law from the University of Coimbra and is a journalist, commentator, columnist and writer.
She was editor and chief editor of the weekly Expresso, where she writes the column «Capricious Feather» and continues to publish regularly. She was also on the editorial boards of the newspapers A Tarde, Correio da Manhã and Jornal de Letras.
For four years (2000-2004), she directed the Casa Fernando Pessoa, where she re-founded the magazine Tabacaria, and was a member of the Board of Directors of the Centro Cultural de Belém (2010-2013).
She is a resident commentator on SIC Notícias’ political current affairs programme «The Axis of Evil» and Canal Q’s programme «What Remains of What Passes». She co-wrote the television programmes «Figures of Style» with Vasco Graça Moura, and «Chatter», both on RTP2, and «The Path is Made by Walking» with Mário Soares, on RTP1. She also appeared on the television programme «The Lord Who Follows» on SIC.
She has published books of short stories, collections of essays and chronicles and a novel. She is a member of the jury for the Pessoa Prize and the German Marshall Fund in Portugal, and is a member of the General Council of the University of Coimbra.

He holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Goethe University in Germany and he is a full professor of Physics at the University of Coimbra (UC), where he has held various management positions. He founded and directed the Centre for Computational Physics, where he installed the largest and fastest Portuguese supercomputer for scientific calculation. He is the director of UC's Rómulo Ciência Viva Centre and one of Portugal's most important science communicators, with books, textbooks and hundreds of articles published. He has lectured at universities in Brazil and the USA and he was scientific coordinator of the "Knowledge" area of Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos and a member of the Scientific Council of the Foundation for Science and Technology. He chaired the regional board of the Portuguese Physics Society, through which he promoted scientific experimentation activities for school laboratories, created the "Mocho" portal for teaching and promoting science and was a consultant for television programmes. He is a member of the International Forum of Portuguese Researchers. Distinguished with the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator and the Golden Globe for Merit and Excellence in Science (2005), he also received the Ciência Viva Grand Prize (2017) and the José Mariano Gago Award from SPA (2018).

Last updated: November 2019

He has a Bachelor’s degree in Modern and Contemporary History and he is a writer, literary critic, translator and assistant editor at Ler magazine.
Born into a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses, but today «without religion», he wrote about the reality of religious minorities, almost unknown in Portugal, in his book «Alleluia».
His début novel, «The First Things», published by Quetzal in 2013, and he won the Fernando Namora Literary Prize, the Narrative Prize from the P.E.N. Club and the 2015 José Saramago Award.
He worked for DN Jovem, Atlântico magazine and the i newspaper, and he was also a communication advisor to the publishing houses in the Bertrand Círculo Group. He wrote the «Guide to 50 Portuguese Fiction Characters» (Guerra e Paz, 2013) and his second novel, “Today, You Will Be With Me In Paradise», received the Fiction Award 2016-2017 at the Literary Fiction Festival.
He works with the Observador newspaper and writes the Circo da Lama blog.

He is a specialist in geopolitics and a researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations at Nova University Lisbon and the Centre for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University in Washington.
He has a Master’s degree in International Relations and a Bachelor's degree in Political Science. He has been an international affairs consultant for diplomatic, political and business entities such as Maintrust Investment Consulting. He is also a partner in FIRMA – Portuguese Business Agency, where he is head of the Political Risk area.
He is an international policy columnist at the Diário de Notícias, a commentator on RTP and Antena 1 and is a regular presence on national and foreign media.
He is author and co-author of a number of books, including the essay «Portugal and the Atlantic», published by Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos.

The Vice-Rector of the University of Lisbon was one of the promoters of a unique course in Portugal: the Bachelor’s degree in General Studies, which has been bringing Arts, Literature and Science topics together since 2011, allowing students to choose the subjects that most interest them.
He has a PhD in Anglo-American Studies from the University of Lisbon School of Arts and Humanities, he specialised in English and American Literature, and has a PhD from Brown University. He teaches in the Department of Anglican Studies and on the Literature Theory programme at the School of Arts and Humanities.
In this institution, he was also director and Chairman of the Scientific Council between 2008 and 2013. His professional work, teaching and research, has focused on the Theory of Literature, European and American Modernism, the translation of English and American authors and the dramaturgy of English and Portuguese texts.
He works with the Advanced Literary Studies Laboratory at the Nova School of Social and Human Sciences in Lisbon.
He is a non-executive administrator of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and president of the Independent General Council of RTP.
Among other essays, in 2017, he co-wrote «University as It Should Be» with Miguel Tamen, for Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos.

António da Gama Lobo Xavier holds a Law degree and a master's degree in Legal and Economic Sciences. He was a university professor of Economic Policy, Public Finance, Tax Law and Administrative Law at the Faculty of Law of the University de Coimbra and has several publications on these matters. He was a deputy and parliamentary leader of the CDS-PP political party. He is currently a specialist lawyer in tax law and a partner at Morais Leitão, Galvão Teles, Soares da Silva & Associados, Sociedade De Advogados. He is a member of the executive committee of Sonaecom and a non-executive director of Mota-Engil, SGPS, SA; BPI, SGPS, SA; Público, SA; and Riopele S.A. He was Chairman of the IRC Reform Commission (2013); he was also vice president of the Serralves Foundation. For several years he has been a resident commentator on the program “Quadratura do Círculo” (SIC Notícias) and “Circulatura do Quadrado” (TVI24).

Last updated: july 2022

Geographer, PhD in human geography and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto (FAUP), where he works on the integrated master's and PhD courses.
He is also a researcher at FAUP's Centre for Architecture and Urbanism Studies (CEAU). He has published extensively, including «Transgenic Landscapes» (Landscape Museum 2021), «Tour of Portugal» (Contraponto, Lisbon, 2017), «Common Home Territory» (with N. Travasso, FAUP, Porto, 2015), «The Street of the Road» (Dafne, Porto, 2010), «Country Life» (Dafne, Porto, 2012) and «Urban Policies I and II» (with N. Portas and J. Cabral, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, 2003 and 2011) and «City and Democracy» (Argumentum, Lisbon, 2006). He writes regularly for the newspaper «Público».
He has a PhD in Human Geography from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto.

Last updated: September 2022