Ana Lúcia Sá, PhD in Sociology, is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and Public Policy, and a researcher at the Centre for International Studies at Iscte - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa. She is deputy director of the Department of Political Science and Public Policy. She is a member of the Editorial Board of Cadernos de Estudos Africanos. She belongs to the African Politics and International Relations research group of the European Network of African Studies (AEGIS) and the African Studies Section of the Portuguese Political Science Association. She is also a member of the Board and the Visibility Working Group of Aegis, European Network of African Studies. She is an associate researcher at the Amílcar Cabral Centre for Social Studies in Guinea-Bissau. She was a post-doctoral researcher at the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona and visiting fellow at the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University in New York. Her research focuses on authoritarian regimes in Africa, especially Angola and Equatorial Guinea, contexts on which she has published books, chapters in books and articles in journals.

Clara Carvalho (PhD Anthropology, ISCTE, 1999) is an Associate Professor at Iscte-IUL, department of Political Science and Public Policies. President of AEGIS (European Association of African Studies) (2015-2019) and director of the Centre of African Studies/ Centre of International Studies at ISCTE-IUL (2007-2016). As a Visiting Professor, she lectured at Brown University (US). She gave short courses at the universities of Lille (France), Rovira i Virgil (Spain), Mainz (Germany), Lomé (Togo), Libreville (Gabon), Cotonou (Benin), Amilcar Cabral (Guinea-Bissau), UP Maputo (Mozambique). She coordinated evaluation commissions for FCT, A3ES, Leiden University (as a member) and on development policies for Camões IP and Gulbenkian Foundation. She was PI in seven projects with competitive funding. Her main research interests are Development and African Studies, and she has published on development policies, focusing on gender, health, and education. She is the editor of the journal Cadernos de Estudos Africanos and director of the PhD program in African Studies.  

Edalina, PhD in Political Science (University of Lisbon), is a 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. Her research interests comprise democratization, popular protest, representation political institutions,with a focus on Africa. Her work has been featured in Journal of International Relations and Development,  African Affairs, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, Parliamentary Affairs etc. She is a regular contributor to the blog Africaye and recently published the book Party Systems in Young Democracies: Varieties of institutionalization in Sub-Saharan Africa (Routledge, 2018) and edited the volume Popular Protest, Political Opportunities, and Change in Africa (Routledge, 2022). She is currently developing a project on parliamentary activity, party-citizen linkages and constituency service in Africa (see Project HOME). 

Holding two PhD degrees and two Habilitation titles, Renato Pereira is Associate Dean for Internationalization and Research at Iscte Business School. Specialized in Entrepreneurship, Innovation, International Business Management, and in Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Former resident-student at Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, he was appointed to the Board of Directors of the private foundation in charge of managing the international campus of the French capital city, elected by a college representing 5,000+ voters from 150+ nationalities. He has worked for different companies of the ICT cluster, including Outsystems, one of the initial Portuguese unicorns. As Director of Inteli - Innovation Center, he has integrated the coordination structure of the Mobi.E consortium, responsible for the development of the 1st nation-wide network in the world for electric vehicle charging, and the board of directors of SGORME, the network operations management company. For thirteen consecutive years, he was member of the Supervisory Board of Taguspark, the managing company of one of the biggest and most relevant science and technology facilities in Portugal. He was Advisor to the Minister of Public Works, Transportation and Communications of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Portuguese Constitutional Governments. Currently directs the Master's in International Management of iscte Business School; previously has directed the Executive Master in Innovation Management at Iscte Executive Education and several master-level and doctoral-level subjects at both Iscte Business School and School of Sociology and Public Policy. As Associate Professor of Autonomous University of Lisbon, he directed: the PhD program in Business Economics, the Geoeconomics Seminar of the PhD program in International Relations, the MSc program in Business Management, and the BSc program in Management, as well as several subjects from all three levels. He has been the recipient of different research prizes and other distinctions related with his publications awarded by prestigious members of the scientific community. He has supervised 5 post-docs, 21 doctorates and over 200 masters. He has a long and extensive international academic experience, having taken teaching or research visiting positions in higher education institutions from Angola, Brazil, China, Czechia, East-Timor, Finland, France, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Macao, Mexico, Mozambique, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and Uzbekistan.