Bio notes

Irina Velicu | Irina Velicu is a Researcher working on socio-environmental conflicts in post-communist Europe at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal. She is currently the Principle Investigator of the JustFood FCT project, expanding her work by looking at food justice. Dr. Velicu is a member of the POSTRADE Research Group and of ECOSOC, looking at the intersections of social and environmental justice. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Hawaii (USA) and an MA in International Studies from the University of Warwick (UK). Her work has received funding from national and international research organisations (including the EU-FCT, Marie Curie, Chevening). Dr. Velicu worked as a Marie Curie Experienced Researcher within the ENTITLE European Network of Political Ecology. Her recent publications can be found under Environmental Politics, Theory, Culture and Society, Ecological Economics, Geoforum, New Political Science, Globalizations.

Maria Paula Meneses | Principal researcher at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra. A Mozambican scholar, she did her graduate studies in Russia (MA in History from St. Petersburg University) and obtained her PhD in the USA, by Rutgers University. In 2009 she was a visiting scholar at EHSS, Paris. Currently she is the Vice-President for Scientific activities at CES. Her research focus on the political history and socio-legal complexity of southern Africa, especially in Mozambique, Angola and South Africa. At the heart of her interests are the relations between knowledge, power and societies. Paying special attention to people who experienced the violence of the colonial encounter her academics and activist activities seek ways to decolonize knowledge and contribute towards the Epistemologies of the South. At the CES Maria Paula Meneses develops several research projects and teaches in two PhD programs, namely Postcolonialisms and Global Citizenship and Human Rights in the 21st th century. Internationally she co-coordinates, with Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Karina Bidaseca, CES-CLACSO e-learning specialization course on Epistemologies of the South. Her work has been published in journals, books and reports in several countries, including Mozambique, Spain, Portugal, Senegal, USA, England, Germany, Colombia, amid others.

Micael Pereira, Expresso: is an investigative journalist at Expresso and he has participated in ICIJ's Offshore Leaks, Panama Papers, Bahama Leaks and Paradise Papers investigations. During a career spanning more than 20 years, he has also exposed Portugal's role in the CIA's secret rendition program after 9/11, worked on Wikileaks’ diplomatic cables leak. He also collaborates with the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC), a network founded by a dozen European newsrooms. In the past decade he has investigated major corruption cases in his country, including the case involving former prime-minister José Sócrates. In addition to his investigative work, he has been publishing reports from countries including East Timor (on civil unrest), Afghanistan (on the war), Russia (on the feminist punkgroup Pussy Riot’s story), China (on the rise of Shenzhen), Iran (on common people), Kosovo (on nation building) and Hungary (on freedom of expression).

Stefan Cândea, PhD, EIC.network: An award winning investigative journalist from Romania, specialized in covering organized crime, now the coordinator of European Investigative Collaborations (EIC), which he co-founded in 2015. EIC investigations have covered, among others, the murky financial transactions in the world of European professional football, the Malta workings as a pirate base for tax avoidance inside the EU, and the secret dealings of the International Criminal Court. Recently, while looking for a way to lower the barrier to investigative collaborations, he founded Liquid Investigations. During the last two decades Ştefan participated in co-founding the Global Investigative Journalism Network and helped kickstart several nonprofit ventures related to in-depth journalism, thus contributing in building a backbone for investigative-related journalism initiatives that stretch across Europe and beyond. As a long-time member of ICIJ, he managed the Eastern Europe research into the Offshore Leaks project which was in 2012 the first large cross-border investigative reporting collaboration in history. A former Nieman Fellow at Harvard, Ştefan has been involved in training and teaching, as well as in critical reflection on the media in his own country and lately on his on field, earning his PhD degree with a critical analysis of the cross-border investigative networks.