Politics

She was born in Angola on 10 June 1957. She got her PhD in Law (Constitutional Law) at the University of Lisbon School of Law.
She was minister of Home Affairs (2025-2026), an ombudswoman and professor at the Nova School of Law in Lisbon, with aggregation in legal and political sciences.
She has devoted her teaching and research career to the areas of constitutional law. She also teaches subjects such as comparative public law, fundamental rights and constitutional justice.
She was a judge in the Constitutional Court between April 2007 and July 2016, an institution of which she was vice-president between October 2012 and July 2016.
A member of several international scientific associations (including the Ibero-American Institute of Constitutional Law and the International Association of Constitutional Law), she has written a number of various works on her area of expertise since 1984.

Last updated: February 2026

He is Visiting Assistant Professor at the Humanities Department of the University of Lisbon, where he teaches political philosophy, the history of contemporary ideas and European studies. He holds a PhD in Political Philosophy from FLUL and conducted post-doctoral research on federalism (modern and contemporary thought). He is the author of several articles and books, including: «Reason and Liberty. The Political Thought of James Madison» (Esfera do Caos, 2012), «Challenges to Democratic Participation. Antipolitics, Deliberative Democracy, and Pluralism» (co-editor, Lexington Books, 2014) and «Contemporary Political Theories» (co-editor, Documenta, 2016). He regularly contributes to the media as a political commentator on US-related issues.

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.

He was born in Lisbon in 1975. He won the José Saramago Literary Prize in 2009 with «The Three Lives» and was a finalist in the Portugal Telecom Prize in 2011 with the same book. He has published twelve novels. He was a finalist in the Best Narrative Fiction Prize from the Portuguese Society of Authors (2011 and 2015), the Fernando Namora Literary Prize (2011, 2012, 2015, 2016), and the European Literary Prize in 2012. His books are published in several countries.

Nell and Herbert M. Singer Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. She specialises in contemporary political and legal theory, with a focus on civil society, sovereignty, globalisation and democracy, religion and politics. She is the author of several books and articles, including «Class and Civil Society: The Limits of Marxian Critical Theory» (University of Massachusetts Press, 1982); «Civil Society and Political Theory» (co-authored with Andrew Arato) (MIT Press, 1992); «Regulating Intimacy: A New Legal Paradigm» (Princeton University Press, 2002); and «Globalization and Sovereignty: Rethinking Legality and Legitimacy in the Epoch of Globalization» (Cambridge University Press, 2012). She is the co-editor of two volumes: «Democratic Citizenship and War» (Rutledge, 2010) and «Religion, Secularism and Constitutional Democracy» (Columbia University Press, 2016). She has published over 70 articles in journals such as «Constellations, Ethics and International Affairs, Philosophy & Social Criticism, Social Research, Political Theory, Telos and Thesis Eleven». She has also published in various legal journals and authored several book chapters. Her work has been translated into various languages including Chinese, French, German, Italian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish and Swedish.

(Pamplona, Spain, 1955) Graduated in Journalism from the University of Navarra. He began his career at the Europa Press agency and in 1981 joined El País, where he still works. He has written about sports and local affairs, and was a reporter in Madrid and Barcelona. In 1998, he founded the technology supplement Ciberp@ís. Since July 2014, he has been El País' correspondent in Lisbon.

Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University. After graduating from the Ecole Normale Supérieure and Sciences-Po in Paris, she received her PhD in Political Science from Harvard University in 2008. She is the author of «Hume. Probabilité et Choix Raisonnable» (PUF: 2004) and «Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many» (Princeton University Press, 2013, winner of the 2015 David and Elaine Spitz Prize for best work in democratic/liberal theory published two years earlier). She is co-editor, with Jon Elster, of «Collective Wisdom: Principles and Mechanism» (Cambridge University Press, 2012). She is currently researching and writing a new book provisionally entitled «After Representation: Rethinking Democracy for the 21st Century». She has published several articles based on subjects such as the consensus on deliberative democracy, the 2010-2013 constitutional process, crowdsourced policymaking in Finland and workplace democracy.

Vice-president of the Constitutional Court of Portugal, elected by the judges in April 2023, and professor at Católica School of Law. Judge of the Constitutional Court of Portugal (sworn into office in 2016 for a 9-year term).
He is also a member of the Executive Committee of the International Association of Constitutional Law.

Last update: december 2023

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.