Boaventura de Sousa Santos was born in Coimbra on November 15, 1940. He holds a PhD in sociology of law from Yale University (1973). He is Professor at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra (Faculdade de Economia da Universidade de Coimbra) and Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was also Global Legal Scholar at the University of Warwick and Visiting Professor at Birkbeck College at the University of London. He is Emeritus Director of the Center for Social Studies (Centro de Estudos Sociais – CES) at the University of Coimbra and Scientific Coordinator of the Permanent Observatory of Portuguese Justice (Observatório Permanente da Justiça Portuguesa). From 2011 to 2016, he directed the research project “ALICE – Weird Mirrors, Unforeseen Lessons: Defining for Europe a new way of sharing experiences around the world” (ALICE – Espelhos estranhos, lições imprevistas: definindo para a Europa um novo modo de partilhar as experiências o mundo), a project funded by the European Research Council (ERC), one of the most prestigious and competitive international funding for scientific research in the European Continent. He has written and published extensively in the fields of sociology of law, political sociology, epistemology, postcolonial studies, and on the themes of social movements, globalization, participatory democracy, state reform, human rights, with fieldwork in Portugal, Brazil, Colombia, Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde, Bolivia and Ecuador. His works are translated into Spanish, English, Italian, French, German, Chinese, Romanian, Danish and Polish.