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Team

Tiago Fernandes is Head of the Center. Tiago Fernandes is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Nova University (Lisbon) and the V-Dem Regional Manager for Southern Europe. He holds a PhD from the European University Institute (Florence) and is the author of The Liberal Wing and the End of the Portuguese Dictatorship, 1968-1974 (Lisbon, 2006), Civil Society (Lisbon, 2014) and, among other articles, "Rethinking Pathways to Democracy: Civil Society in Spain and Portugal, 1960s – 2014" (Democratization, 2014). Forthcoming volumes are (with D. della Porta, M. Andretta, F. O’Connor, E. Romanos, M. Vogiatzoglou), Late neoliberalism and its discontents: Comparing crises and movements in the European periphery, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2016; (with D. della Porta, M. Andretta, E. Romanos, M. Vogiatzoglou), Memories and Movements. The Legacy of Democratic Transitions in Contemporary Anti-Austerity Protest, Oxford University Press, 2017 (Submitted); and (co-edited with Michael Bernhard and Rui Branco), Special Issue on Civil Society, Democracy, and Inequality: Cross-Regional Comparisons (1970s-2015), Comparative Politics (2017). Currently he is writing a book, provisionally entitled Civil Society, Democracy and Authoritarianism: A Comparison of France, Italy and Spain (1870s-1940s) and editing another, Varieties of Democracy in Southern Europe, 1968-2015.

Vania Alvares is a PhD candidate in political science at Nova University of Lisbon. After becoming a lawyer from University of Coimbra and a member of the Bar, she later pursued her interest on the judicialization of politics and democracy and graduated from the master program in political science from Nova University, with a thesis on the superior councils of magistracy.

Rui Branco is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Studies, Nova University of Lisbon. His research interests center on comparative state formation, civil society and social policy. His more recent work has focused on civil society and democratization in new democracies, social policy and welfare civil society in Southern Europe, and fiscal welfare and inequality in Portugal.

João Cancela is a PhD candidate and a teaching assistant at the Department of Political Studies in Nova University of Lisbon. His main research interests are political participation, elections, and local politics. He is the country coordinator for Malta and Spain within the V-Dem network. With Benny Geys, he recently published “Explaining Voter Turnout: A Meta-Analysis of National and Subnational Elections”, Electoral Studies, 2016.

Edna Falorca is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Nova University of Lisbon. Her research interests are Gender Inequalities and the Quality of Democracy. Her Masters dissertation was on the under-representation of women in politics in Portugal (Women’s Pathways to Power, 2010). Currently, her PhD project focuses on gender inequalities in work-family balance, what drives them and the possibilities for change in Southern Europe.

Frederico Rocha is Country Coordinator for Portugal and Assistant Director at the Cardiff University's European Documentation Centre. He holds an MA in Political Science from Nova University (Lisbon) and his research has been focusing on forms of nationalism, democratic transitions and radical right-wing parties. He also has an academic interest on party systems and civil societies across Europe.

Pedro T. Magalhães is a researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations (IPRI). He holds a PhD in political science from Nova University of Lisbon and his research interests are political theory and the history of political ideas, as well as, within the V-Dem project, the subnational dimension of democracy in Southern Europe. His most recent publication is «A Contingent Affinity: Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and the Challenge of Modern Politics», Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 77, No. 2 (April 2016), pp. 283-304.

José Santana-Pereira, PhD in Political and Social Sciences (EUI, Florence, 2012), is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at ICS, University of Lisbon, and a Guest Assistant Professor at ISCTE-IUL. His research interests comprise elections, public opinion, political attitudes and behaviour, media and politics, and the organization and effects of political campaigns. His work has been published in journals such as Electoral Studies and South European Society and Politics. Since the summer of 2015 he is the Country Coordinator for Italy. In the V-DEM Southern Europe team, his areas of expertise are the media and direct democracy.

Edalina Rodrigues Sanches is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences (University of Lisbon) and at IPRI (Portuguese Institute of International Relations). She has been a V-Dem country expert Cape Verde and Guinea Bissau. Her research interests include party system institutionalization in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Europe, quality of democracy and political behavior.

Tiago Tibúrcio is a doctoral student in Political Science, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Centro de Investigação e Estudos de Sociologia (CIES-IUL), in Portugal. His research focus is on Parliaments and citizen's engagement with parliaments. He worked as an expert in Parliaments and petitions with the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme and the European Parliament

Pedro Diniz de Sousa is a PhD candidate in Political Science at NOVA University of Lisbon. He’s developed his research in the areas of political communication and discourse. He has been Assistant Professor of Political Sociology and Social Science Methodology. He is the author of the following books: Dramatic Discourse in the Portuguese post-Revolutionary Press (2003) and co-author of Being a Journalist in Portugal: Sociological Profiles (2011) and The New Generations of Portuguese Journalists (2014).

Filipa Raimundo is research fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, and Guest Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and Public Policy at ISCTE-IUL, Lisbon. She holds a PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute, Florence. Her interests include democratization, transitional justice, the quality of democracy, and political decision-making. Her work has been published by journals such as Democratization, South European Society and Politics, and the Portuguese Journal of Social Science and in edited volumes by Palgrave/Macmillan and Columbia University Press.