João Carlos Espada
Chairholder of the EP Bronislaw Geremek European Civilisation Chair, European Interdisciplinary Studies Department (Natolin (Warsaw) Campus)
JOÃO CARLOS ESPADA is the director and founder (1996) of the Institute for Political Studies at the Catholic University of Portugal, where he is University professor of Political Studies. He was previously a tenured Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences of the (state) University of Lisbon.
Since January 2011, he holds the European Parliament / Bronislaw Geremek European Civilization Chair at the College of Europe, Natolin (Warsaw).
He earned his D.Phil from the University of Oxford, under the supervision of Lord (Ralf) Dahrendorf, and he taught at Brown, Stanford and Georgetown Universities in the US. He is editor of the quarterly journal Nova Cidadania and president of the Portuguese section of the International Churchill Society/Churchill Centre. He has co-founded and is a member of the Board of the European Partnership for Democracy, as well as of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Democracy, the steering committee of the Council for a Community of Democracies, and of the executive committee of the Michael Oakeshott Association. He has authored nine books and edited another ten in political theory, all in Portuguese and several in English. He has contributed regular opinion columns to the press over the last 25 years. Since March 2006, he has been political adviser to the President of the Portuguese Republic, Prof. Aníbal Cavaco Silva, having held a similar position during the first presidential term of Mr. Mário Soares (1986-91). He is a member of the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon, of the Naval Academy and of the International Academy of Portuguese Culture. In June 2010, he was awarded The Medal of Gratitude by the European Solidarity Centre, based at Gdansk, in “appreciation of [his] involvement in organizing assistance for Solidarity and support for Poles facing an authoritarian government”. In 1996, he was awarded the title of “Grande Oficial da Ordem do Mérito” by the President of the Republic of Portugal, Mr. Mário Soares.