The project team is multidisciplinary, covering sociology, law, economics and management and has investigated in the fields of the third sector, social economy, cooperativism, management and quality in the third sector, welfare mix, social entrepreneurship innovation, cooperative law, social enterprises, innovation and territorial development.
Sílvia Ferreira (Principal Investigator)
Sílvia Ferreira holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Lancaster (UK), is an assistant professor in Sociology at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra and is a researcher at the Center for Social Studies. She is co-coordinator of the Master, Social Intervention, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Master. She is a member of the board of the EMES – International Research Network.
Her research has focused on social security reform, the third sector and social policies, the role of third sector organizations in promoting gender equality, social entrepreneurship and social innovation in the social and solidarity economy, social enterprises, governance through local partnerships State / third sector. Currently participates in several projects on social enterprises, social and solidarity economy and social innovation, namely she is chair of the COST Action EMPOWER-SE – Empowering the Next Generation of Social Enterprise Scholars.
Hugo Pinto (Co-Principal Investigator)
Economist. PhD in Economics – Knowledge and Innovation (University of Coimbra), MSc in Regional Economics and graduate in Economics (University of Algarve). Researcher of the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra and invited Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Economics of the University Algarve. Main research topics are development and regional resilience, innovation systems, knowledge transfer and the role of universities.
He has coordinated and participated in several R&D and public policy evaluation projects, being involved in smart specialisation related initiatives.
Recent research includes “Innovation in SMEs and Micro Firms” (Routledge, 2018) and “Resilience, Crisis and Innovation Dynamics” (Edward Elgar, 2018).
Patrícia Moura Sá received her PhD in Management from Sheffield Hallam University in the United Kingdom. She is currently an associate professor at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra (FEUC). She is a researcher at CICP – Center for Research in Political Science and colaborator of the Centre for Business and Economics Research (CeBER) of the University of Coimbra. She is currently vice-director of the faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra. Her research areas include services quality, quality in public administration, quality and innovation and excellence models and organisational evaluation.
Her publications include several articles in peer-reviewed international journals (International Journal of Quality and Service Sciences, Policy Studies, RPER, Technovation, The Services Industries Journal, The TQM Journal, Total Quality Management and Business Excellence, among others) encyclopedia entries, and book chapters in publishers such as Sage and Springer.
Graduated in Law from Coimbra Law School. Master and PhD from the same Faculty. Assistant Professor of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra where she teaches legal disciplines. Member of the Center for Cooperative Studies and Social Economy of FEUC. Researcher at the Center for Business and Economics Research (CeBER) of the University of Coimbra. Her main areas of research are company law, insurance law, and competition law. She also has some works dedicated to cooperative law.
Teresa Maneca Lima is a researcher at the Center for Social Studies and a member of the Center for Studies on Democracy, Citizenship and Law. Doctorate in “Law, Justice and Citizenship in the XXI century” of the University of Coimbra. In the context of the research carried out at the CES, she has participated in several research projects on topics such as participation, labor relations and access to law, such as: “Access to the Law and Mobilization of Labor Courts: The Case of Discrimination between Women and Men” and “The action of the Public Prosecutor in the access of the citizens to the right and justice in the conflicts of family and the work”. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher with the project “Accidents at work and the right to reparation in Portugal: between social conceptions and jurisprudential understandings”. Her current research interests focus on the areas of access to law and justice, occupational hazards and human rights at work.
PhD in Sociology from the University of Coimbra; Associate Professor (retred) of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra (FEUC); Permanent Researcher of Centre os Social Studies (CES).
Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, her research has focused on the feminization of occupations, the changing patterns of sexual segregation of overall labour market and employment, and to the evolution of equality public policies. Member of the editorial board of national and international journals of social sciences and women’s studies. Founding member of the Portuguese Association of Women’s Studies. Since 2014 is the Chief Editor of the biannual journal ex æquo. Since 2004, is a member of the European Commission Expert Group on Gender and Employment. Published work includes articles and essays in national and international periodicals and collective books.
Michela Giovannini (post doc researcher, 11/11/2019-31/5/2021)
Michela Giovannini holds a PhD in Local Development and Global Dynamics at the University of Trento, Italy (2014). She was Marie Sklodowska Curie fellow at the CES. Her research interests focus on social and solidarity economy in Latin America specially in indigenous and social exclusion contexts, and in the relatons between social movements and solidarity economy organisations in Spain and Portugal.
Pedro Fidalgo (junior researcher, 1/12/2019-30/11/2021)
Pedro Fidalgo is a junior researcher at the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra. Graduated in Sociology from the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra (2019) and Master student in International Relations – Peace, Security and Development Studies at FEUC with a dissertation on “Real Queer Utopias: Resistances in a heterocisnormative world”. He was distinguished as the best sociology undergraduate student of the 2018/2019 academic year and winner of the FEUC Exemplary 1st cycle award in the same year. His scientific interests include Queer studies, rights and violations LGBTQIA +, politics and international relations, economics and social enterprises.
Marthe Nyssens is a Full professor at the Department of Economics of the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium,where she is the president of a research center ‘Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaires Travail, Etat, Société (CIRTES). She has been acting as a founding member of the EMES European Research Network. She holds a Master in economics (University of California at San Diego),) and a Ph.D. in economics (University of Louvain). Her work focuses on conceptual approaches to the third sector (associations, cooperatives, social enterprises), both in developed and developing countries (West Africa and Latin America), as well as on the links between third sector organisations and public policies. Her recent work focuses on the emergence of different social enterprise models in an international comparative perspective as well as the role of social enterprise in the field of work integration and care. In addition to numerous articles published in scientific journals and chapters of books, Marthe Nyssens published, in collaboration with other authors, several books on Social Enterprises.
Ricardo Oliveira Ferreira (intern, May-July 2019)
Ricardo Oliveira Ferreira was our summer intern in the context of the University of Coimbra Summer Internships. He was a Sociology Degree student of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra.
Joana Almeida (post doc researcher, 1/7/2018-30/9/2019)
PhD in Sociology: Labour Relations, Social Inequalities and Syndicalism, Master in Social Intervention, Innovation and Entrepreneurship by the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra and a degree in Social Work from the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Coimbra. As a research fellow, she has developed work in the area of labour transitions, with particular focus on issues of unemployment, self-employment and social inequalities.
Luara Maranhão (junior researcher, 1/11/2018-30/9/2019)
Graduated in Social Communications at School of Communications and Arts of the University of São Paulo (ECA-USP) and with a master ́s degree in Social Intervention, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra (FEUC). She was research assistant in the research project «MAPPING – Up-date of the mapping of social enterprises and their eco-systems in Europe», a study developed to know the ecosystem of social enterprises in the EU, funded by Euricse and the European Comission (Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion). Also worked in a brazilian b-corp (Natura) as sustainability coordinator carrying out Local Development projects. Her current fields of research interest are social enterprises, social innovation, social change, social entrepreneurship (with focus on creative spaces), third sector and sustainability.