
The conference
The acceleration of Global Change is increasingly affecting our environment and ways of life, with the future rushing into our present lives and forcing people, societies and political systems to cope with tomorrow’s realities – some of them hard to understand or even to notice
At a global scale, the adoption of the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement, both in 2015, signalled an unprecedent awareness of the rising challenges and threats for Humankind and the Planet. Fulfilling these commitments depends, however, on the will and ability of countries, regions, communities, private and public institutions, families and individuals. Besides, acting is often difficult, namely regarding public goods – after all, why spend money or time when others might do the job?
Nevertheless, we are moving forward. Not only states but also big private companies and financial institutions are increasingly using the sustainable goals framework and targets in their strategic plans and current investment or lending operations. Whether moved by mission, economic interest or consumers’ preferences and citizens pressure, civil society and private
players are acting, some of them faster than (and even despite of) their governments. In times of acceleration and uncertainty about ongoing global transformations, sustainability is no more a subject confined to a specific institution or sector, but a shared concern for all. Hence, that may signal a move from talking about actions to acting about talks
The 4th Lisbon Conference is focused on domains where the speed of change shortens the gap between the future and the present: Demographic Trends, Climate Change, Energy Transition, Digital Revolution, Inequality and Growth Models, Geopolitical Change, Societal Challenges. Themes within these domains are debated in the context of the pandemic and of the five pillars of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace, Partnerships
Speakers
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa
António Guterres
Augusto Santos Silva
Francisco Seixas da Costa
John Ibbitson
Alioune Sall
Cristina Peres
Jennifer Layke
Miguel B. Araújo
Karin Bäckstrand
Agostinho Miranda
Adrian Currie
Mia Couto
Raquel Vaz Pinto
Katharina Pistor
Francisco Ferreira
Luís Pais Antunes
Pedro Saleiro
Chloe Teevan
Laura Lisboa
Sheri Berman
Charles Powell
Marina Costa Lobo
Elisa Ferreira
Fernando Medina
Luísa Meireles
Ana Martins Vasconcelos
Hugo Luzio
André Fontes
António Coelho
Ana Filipa Fraga
Maria Leonor Carapuço
Catarina Tello de Castro
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa is the President of the Portuguese Republic. With a Degree in Law from the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon and a PhD in Legal and Political Sciences in 1985, he is Full Professor at the Instituto de Ciências Jurídico-Políticas, School of Law of the University of Lisbon. He was President of the Social-Democratic Party (1996-99) and Vice-President of the European People’s Party. He has been Secretary of State, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, and a member of the Council of State (2000-2001 and 2006-2016). He has been a Professor at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences and the Faculty of Law of the Portuguese Catholic University, and he has lectured at Agostinho Neto and Eduardo Mondlane Universities and the University of Eastern Asia. He was a founder of Expresso and Semanário newspapers. He was a member of the committee that drew up the first Press Law, and member of the Constituent Assembly.
António Guterres

António Guterres, United Nations Secretary General
Augusto Santos Silva
Augusto Santos Silva is the Portuguese Minister of Foreign Affairs. Previously he was Minister of Defence (2009-11), Minister of Parliamentary Affairs (2005-09), Minister of Education (2000-2001), Minister of Culture (2001-02) and member of the Portuguese Parliament. He became a member of the Socialist Party in 1990. He holds a PhD on Sociology at ISCTE-IUL, Lisbon, and is Full Professor in the School of Economics of University of Porto. He held several university management positions, including the president of the Scientific Council of his Faculty and vice-dean of the University. He is the author of several books on the epistemology of social sciences, the sociology of culture and development, and political thinking.
Francisco Seixas da Costa

Francisco Seixas da Costa is chairman of the Lisbon Club. He was a diplomat for more than four decades, Portuguese ambassador at the UN, OSCE, UNESCO, Brazil and France. He was also Secretary of State for European Affairs in two governments, executive director of the North-South Centre of the Council of Europe, and university teacher. He is currently a consultant and business manager. He authored several books on international issues and is columnist in the press.
John Ibbitson

John Ibbitson is a Canada’s journalist and author. He initiated his activity at The Globe and Mail in 1999, where he is writer at large since 2015. He authored several books, including The Big Shift, (with Darrell Bricker and Stephen Harper), the award-winning biography of Canada’s 22nd prime minister. He also writes plays and novels, including The Landing, which won the 2008 Governor General’s Children’s Literature Award. He co-wrote with Darrel Bicker Empty Planet, after travelling to six continents, talking with specialists and a wide assortment of people as they explored the conviction that global population decline rather than demographic growth will define this century. The book was published in Canada, US, UK, Portugal and is being published in Chinese, Spanish, Japanese and Korean.
Alioune Sall

Alioune Sall is Founder and Executive Director of the African Futures Institute, in Pretoria. In the UNDP he was Regional Coordinator of the African Futures Programme (1997-2003), Chief Office of the UNDP Assistant Administrator for Africa (1995-1997), Chief UNDP Liaison Office in South Africa (1993-1995), Senior Adviser in the Bureau for Programme Policy and Evaluation (1988-1993) and Technical Adviser on Human Resources Development to the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (1979-1986). He authored books and contributions to books, journal articles, book reviews, and consultancy reports. Prominent among them are “Africa 2015: what possible futures for sub-Saharan Africa?” and “The future competitiveness of African economies”. He holds advanced degrees in Philosophy and Development and a PhD in Sociology.
Cristina Peres

Cristina Peres is a journalist since 1987. She works at Expresso newspaper since 1992, beginning by the Cultural area where she wrote on dance and theatre, having coordinated those sections from 1998 a 2005. Coordinated the international political section of Expresso between 2005 and 2017, where she covered the international scenein the multiple platforms of the journal – print edition, digital, multimedia – and she authors, since September 2020, the Expresso podcast on African issues “África Agora”. Cristina was consultant for performative arts in the programme “Câmara Clara” of RTP2, from 2006 to 2012. Prior to working at Expresso she and worked and collaborated in various national and international newspapers and reviews. She graduated in Philosophy from the Social Sciences School of the Nova Lisbon University
Jennifer Layke

Jennifer Layke is Global Director of the Energy Program at the World Resources Institute. She co-founded the Building Efficiency Accelerator, a public private collaboration of over 35 partners supporting 30 cities implementing efficiency policies and projects. Her pioneering U.S. Green Power Market Development Group created in 2000 was an early foundation for nearly two decades of corporate renewable energy procurement efforts. She led WRI’s work on U.S. cap and trade design (2006-2009). Jennifer’s international experience includes consulting for the World Bank and the U.S. EPA on technology transfer for ozone layer protection. Jennifer has a B.A. in Asian Studies/Political Studies from Pitzer College in Claremont, CA, and was a student at Nanjing University. She has a M.S. and MBA from the University of Michigan’s Erb Institute for Sustainability.
Miguel B. Araújo

Miguel Bastos Araújo is Research Professor of the Spanish Research Council and Professor of Biogeography at the University of Évora. He is recognised as a world leader in the study of climate change effects on biodiversity. He lectured and researched at Imperial College, the Universities of Oxford and Copenhagen, CNRS, and the London Natural History Museum. With more than 200 publications, Miguel is “highly cited” by Thomson Reuters since 2014. He won the Ernst Haeckel Prize 2019, the Pessoa Prize 2018, the Rey Jaime I Prize (2016), the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award (2014), the International Biogeography Society MacArthur & Wilson Award (2013) and the Global Information Biodiversity Facility Ebbe Nielsen Prize (2013). He graduated from the University College of London.
Karin Bäckstrand

Karin Bäckstrand is a Professor in Environmental Social Science at the Department of Political Science at Stockholm University and senior researcher at the Institute for Future Studies. Her research is focused on global environmental politics, non-state actors in climate change governance after the Paris Agreement, the negotiation of UN sustainable development and 2030 Agenda, and the democratic legitimacy of global governance. She is a member of the Swedish government’s Climate Policy Council. She has been a professor at the Department of Political Science, Lund University (2012-2014), Visiting Professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Oxford (2013), and Wallenberg Postdoctoral Fellow on Environment and Sustainability, Laboratory for Energy and Environment, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2002-2004).
Agostinho Miranda

Agostinho Miranda is an attorney, and the Founding Partner of the law firm Miranda & Associados. He is also the chairman of ProPública - Direito e Cidadania, the first public interest law advocacy center in Portugal. Agostinho worked as Senior Counsel at Gulf Oil and Chevron Corporation, and was a board member for Cabinda Gulf Oil Company. He held board-level positions at Galp Energia, REN, Siderurgia Nacional and other Portuguese corporations. Agostinho is a member of ABOTA (American Board of Trial Advocates) and of IATL (International Academy of Trial Lawyers). He has lectured at Eduardo Mondlane (Mozambique), Agostinho Neto (Angola), Universidade de Lisboa (Portugal) and other universities. Agostinho holds a JD from the Universidade de Coimbra Law School and post-graduation degrees from the Center for American and International Law (Dallas, USA) and University of Dundee (Scotland).
Adrian Currie

Adrian Currie is a Lecturer of Philosophy in the Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology, University of Exeter. He is member of Egenis (Centre of Life Sciences, Exeter), research affiliate with the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and external collaborator at Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, both at Cambridge University. He is founder of Extinct, the philosophy of paleontology blog. Adrian is a philosopher of science, best known for his work on historical sciences—archaeology, geology, paleontology—but also interested in life sciences, existential risk and the philosophy of creativity. Currie received his PhD in 2014 from Australian National University, and lectured at Victoria, Sydney, Calgary and Cambridge Universities.
Mia Couto

Mia Couto is a Mozambican writer, with more than 30 books published in 30 countries – novels, poetry, tales and books for children. He was awarded with several prizes, including the National Literature Prize (twice), the Camões Prize and the Neustad Prize and, in 2016, he was shortlisted to the Man Booker Prize. An International Jury (gathered in Zimbabwe) considered his novel Terra Sonâmbula one of the 10 best African books of the 20th century. Mia is Member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. He is an environmental consultant for more than 20 years being a co-founder of IMPACTO and its General Director since 2009. He was journalist at Diário de Notícias in Maputo. He is graduated in Biology from the Eduardo Mondlane University.
Raquel Vaz Pinto

Raquel Vaz-Pinto is Researcher of the Portuguese Institute of International Relations of Nova University of Lisbon, and member of the Lisbon Club board. Currently, she teaches the course on Asian Studies at theSocial and Human Sciences Faculty of the Nova University of Lisbon. She was President of the Portuguese Political Science Association from 2012 to 2016. Her articles have been published, amongst others, in the Brazilian Journal of International Politics and The American Interest online. She is the author of «A Grande Muralha e o Legado de Tiananmen, a China e os Direitos Humanos» [The Great Wall and the Legacy of Tiananmen, China and Human Rights] (Tinta-da-china, 2010), «Os Portugueses e o Mundo» [The Portuguese and the World] (Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos, 2014) and published in 2016 by Tinta-da-china «Administração Hillary» (together with Bernardo Pires de Lima) and «Para Lá do Relvado, o que podemos aprender com o futebol» [Beyond the Pitch, what we can learn with football]. She got a PhD in Political Sciences from the Aveiro University.
Katharina Pistor

Katharina Pistor chairs the Center on Global Legal Transformation at Columbia University. “The Code of Capital”, was named one of 2019 best books by Financial Times and Business Insider. She lectured and researched at Harvard Law School, Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Hamburg Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Law. Pistor belonged to editorial boards of Journal of Institutional Economics, European Business Organization Law Review, American Journal of Comparative Law, Columbia Journal for European Law. In 2012 she received (with Martin Hellwig) the Max Planck Research Award on International Financial Regulation and in 2014 the Allen & Overy Prize for the best working paper on law of the European Corporation Governance Institute. Since 2015 she belongs to the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences.
Francisco Ferreira

Francisco Ferreira is Amartya Sen Professor of Inequality Studies and Director of the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics (LSE). He served a long career at the World Bank, his last position being Acting Director for Development Policy in the Development Research Group. Francisco is a non-resident Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labour (Bonn), and published widely in the fields of poverty and inequality in developing countries. He was awarded the Prizes Haralambos Simeonides, Adriano Romariz Duarte and the Kendricks Prize. He serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Economic Inequality, Review of Income and Wealth, and WB Economic Review. He lectured at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and at Ecole d’économie de Paris. He holds a PhD in Economics from LSE.
Luís Pais Antunes

Luís Pais Antunes is Chairman of PLMJ and has over 35 years’ experience as a lawyer. His expertise is in European, Competition Law, Telecoms and IT Law. He is Member of the Board of Forum for Competitiveness since 2018 and Member of the Lisbon Club Board since 2017. He was President of the Court of Arbitrage for Sports (2015-2019). Luís was Secretary of State for Labour (2002-2005), Member of the Parliament and Vice-President of its European Affairs Commission (2005-2009). Luís is Guest Lecturer at the Universities of Coimbra, Lusíada, and Católica in Porto. He was Director General of Competition and Prices, Member of the Legal Service of the European Commission and Legal Secretary at the Court of Justice of the European Communities.
Pedro Saleiro

Pedro Saleiro is a Data Science Manager at Feedzai, leading a research group working on Fairness, Accountability, Transparency and Ethics (FATE) in Artificial Intelligence. In his postdoc at the University of Chicago, he worked with Rayid Ghani at the Center for Data Science and Public Policy, developing new methods, open source tools and doing data science projects in diverse policy areas, from criminal justice to healthcare. Pedro is one of the creators of the Aequitas platform, a toolkit to audit and detect bias and discrimination in Artificial Intelligence systems, which was mentioned in a Nature news article about algorithmic bias. He got his PhD in Machine Learning and Information Retrieval at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto.
Chloe Teevan

Chloe Teevan is an EU Foreign Affairs analyst working with the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM), where her work focuses on the evolving role of the EU in the world. She is currently working on the EU's strategic positioning in the aftermath of Covid-19 with a focus on the external dimension of the EU’s digital agenda. She also working on the evolving role of digital in EU-Africa relations. Chloe previously worked with the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). She has published with outlets including the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, Carnegie’s “Sada”, Middle East Eye, IEMed and spoken on BBC World News, AlJazeera, France 24 and others. Chloe holds a MA from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and a BA from Trinity College Dublin.
Laura Lisboa

Laura Lisboa is currently interested in themes of political theory and strategy and the political and social impact of emerging technologies. In 2018 Laura received the "Adelino Amaro da Costa Prize - Estoril Political Forum" and participated in short-term seminars in the US and Japan. Recently she made a trimestral academic exchange at the St. Anthony’s College in Oxford, from where her current interest in European and international politics has derived. She has a degree in Physical Engineering from the Instituto Superior Técnico of the Lisbon University and is in the final stage of her master’s degree in Political Science and International Relations at the Catholic University.
Sheri Berman

Sheri Berman is Professor of Political Science at the Barnard College of the Columbia University. She authored several books on European social democracy and the fate of democracy during the interwar World Wars’ years, as well as on social democracy and fascism in the Europe of the 19th and the 20th century. Her latest book is Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Régime to the Present Day (2019). Sheri has published in a wide variety of non-scholarly publications, including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, VOX, The Guardian and Dissent. She holds an Honorary Doctorate from the Uppsala University in Sweden (2008) e got her Ph.D. in Government from the University of Harvard (1994).
Charles Powell

Charles Powell is Director of Elcano Royal Institute, Madrid, and Professor of Contemporary History at San Pablo University. He worked at Instituto Universitario Ortega y Gasset (1997-2000) and at Fundación José Ortega y Gasset (2001). In Oxford he lectured History at Corpus Christi College, was J. A. Pye Fellow at University College, and Junior Research Fellow at St. Antony’s College. He published six books and dozens of articles on Spanish history, politics and foreign policy, with emphasis on its European dimension. His last publication was Tiene future el orden liberal internacional? (2017). Since 2017, Charles is Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George for services to British-Spanish relations. He holds a BA in History and Modern Languages and a D. Phil from Oxford University.
Marina Costa Lobo

Marina Costa Lobo is Principal Researcher at Institute of Social Sciences of the Lisbon University, Coordinator of Observatório da Qualidade da Democracia, Member of the Board of Instituto de Políticas Públicas and vice-President of the Lisbon Club. Her research interests focus on electoral behaviour and political institutions in Portugal in a comparative perspective. Marina was one of the co-directors of the Portuguese Election Study, which has carried out post-election surveys in Portugal since 2002. She published in several academic journals, and the book “Personality Politics? Leaders and Democratic Elections”, co-edited with John Curtice, was published at Oxford University Press (2015). She won an European Research Council Consolidator Grant (2015). She is Doctor in Politics (2001) from St. Antony’s College, Oxford University.
Elisa Ferreira

Elisa Ferreira is the European Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms. She was Member of the Board (2016-2017) and Vice-Governor of Banco de Portugal (2017-2019), Portugal's representative at the Supervisory Board of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (2016-2019), Member of the European Parliament (2004-2016) and Member of the Portuguese Parliament (2002-2004). Elisa was Minister for Planning (1999–2002) and Minister for Environment (1995-1999). She was Executive VP of Porto Industrial Association (1992-1994), VP of Portugal's Northern Region Coordination Commission (1988–1992), Member of the Board of Portugal's Statistics Authority (1989-1992). Senior Lecturer at the Economics School of Porto University since 1977, Elisa got a PhD (1985) and a master’s degree (1981) in Economics from the University of Reading. She graduated in Economics at Porto University in 1977.
Fernando Medina

Fernando Medina is Mayor of Lisbon. He was adviser at INOFOR (1998-2000), member of the Ministry of Education Working Group during the Portuguese Presidency of the EU (2007), advisor for education, science and technology to the Prime-Minister (1999-2002), and advisor to the President of the Portuguese Agency for Investment (2000- 2002). He was Secretary of State for Labour and Professional Training (2005-2009), Secretary of State Adjunct to the Minister of Economics (2009-2011) and member of Parliament (2011). Elected to city councilor and designated deputy-Mayor (2013), Fernando assumed as Mayor (2015) and won the municipal elections (2017). He Presides the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. He has a master’s degree in Economic Sociology from ISEG-UL and is graduated in Economics by the University of Porto.
Luísa Meireles

Luísa Meireles is Chief Editor of Lusa, the Portuguese news Agency. After working 10 years as a lawyer, she joined Expresso in 1989, where she was International Editor (2000-2006) and Principal Writer at the Political Section (2006-2018). She covered the final years of Soviet Union and the regime transitions in Center and Eastern Europe, including the Balkan wars. She specialised in Defense, Security and European Affairs. Luísa co-wrote with Loureiro dos Santos «E Depois do Iraque?» (2003) and published "General Loureiro dos Santos - uma biografia" (2018). She graduated in Law by the University of Lisbon and post-graduated in European Studies by the Lisbon Catholic University. She attended several training courses on how to combat fake news, by Google, Afp and First Draft (2019-2020).
Ana Martins Vasconcelos

Ana Martins Vasconcelos read for the MPhil in Political Theory, at St. Hugh's College at the University of Oxford. She was a Europaeum scholar and is part of a multidisciplinary project about the sense of disconnection within the EU. She has been working as a Research Assistant in the Dahrendorf Programme for the Study of Freedom's Project: " Europe's Stories". Ana graduated in Law and Political Science at the Catholic University of Portugal.
Hugo Luzio

Hugo Ferreira Luzio is a member of the Language, Mind and Cognition Research Group of the Centre of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon. His main philosophical interests are metaphysics and philosophy of art (in particular, philosophy of music), having devoted most of his research to the study of the problem of Personal Identity over time and the problem of ontology of musical works. Hugo is also a drummer and composer in the band Them Flying Monkeys. He has a BA and is a master’s student of Philosophy at the University of Lisbon.
André Fontes

André Fontes is a young Portuguese writer from Almada. André published, in 2019, his first novel, Saturnália, edited by Guerra e Paz Editores and is currently preparing his new book. Besides books, André also writes for Arte Capital magazine. He has a degree in Philosophy from the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon and is post-graduated in Arts of Writing from Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
António Coelho

António Coelho is currently doing a PhD in Physics in the area of Nuclear Fusion at the École Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne. In addition to plasma physics and the study of fusion reactions as an alternative to conventional energy sources, he is interested in literature and music, themes about which he writes at meta-fisica.com. António has a master's degree in Technological Physics Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico of the Universidade de Lisboa.
Ana Filipa Fraga

Ana Filipa Fraga is currently pursuing a master's degree in Politics, Big Data and Quantitative Methods at the University of Warwick, UK, where he is also a research assistant. Her academic interests include financial development and regulation, and topics in macro-prudential policy and financial stability. Ana has a degree in Economics from the Nova School of Business and Economics in Lisbon.
Maria Leonor Carapuço

Maria Leonor Carapuço is the Communication Coordinator of the Artistic and Cultural Association Panóplia. She will start this academic year her postgraduate degree in Communication and Policy Advisory at ISCTE-IUL. Passionate about communication, she wants to give a voice to those who do not have it and to have a positive role in the world, specifically in strengthening democracy. Maria Leonor graduated in Communication Sciences from the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the Nova University of Lisbon, in the domain of Strategic Communication with a minor in International Relations.
Catarina Tello de Castro

Catarina Tello de Castro is a junior member of the PRAXIS group of the Centre of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon and a founding member and coordinator of the Nucleus for Political Studies of the University of Lisbon. She participated as speaker or moderator in six international events of Philosophy in Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Brazil. Her main topics of academic interest are Philosophy and Economic Theory, Political Theory, Ethics, Epistemology and Metaphysics. Catarina is doing a master's degree in Political Science and International Relations at the Catholic University of Lisbon and has a BA in Philosophy from the University of Lisbon.
4th Lisbon Conference Panels
Eight billion people, and so what?
The divergence over climate action: what energy for what future?
Fear as a political tool
The growth - inequality dilemma
Technological acceleration is shaping our lives
Liberal democracy and multilateralism under fire
What European Union for what brave new world?
From Game Boy to Covid-19: an open conversation amongst millennials
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