Assistant professor of political science at Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal). He is the regional coordinator for Southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece) and France of the project Varieties of Democracy, directed by Michael Coppedge, based at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame, U.S.A. He also codirects the project “Civil Society and the Quality of Democracy: Portugal, 1974–2010,” funded by the Portuguese National Science Foundation. He is working on a book project: “Religious Origins of Civil Society: Western Europe, 1870s–1930s.” His publications include several articles in national and international journals and three volumes: a book on the Portuguese authoritarian regime, Neither Dictatorship nor Revolution: The Liberal Wing and the End of the Portuguese Dictatorship, 1968–1974 (Lisbon, 2006); the forthcoming Civil Society (Lisbon, 2013); and Democratie et Societé Civile en Europe du Sud, special Issue, Pole Sud, December 2012 (co-editor). Between 2009 and 2011 he was a visiting fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame. He holds a PhD from the European University Institute, Florence (2009).

Research interests: quality of democracy, civil society, and Southern Europe