Biografia
João Ferrão is a Research Professor (Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon / ICS-ULisboa). He holds a PhD in Human Geography and lectured for over 20 years at the Geography Department (University of Lisbon). He has over 30 years of experience in the areas of economic and social geography and in regional and urban planning. He has been the national coordinator of several international networks under different EU and Latin American funding programmes - TSER Programme, Alfa Programme, European Science Foundation Scientific Programme, etc. He advised the OECD and coordinated various public policy assessment studies for the Portuguese Government and the European Commission, including of the II and III EU Framework Programmes (Portugal). Ferrão was Secretary of State for Spatial Planning and Cities (2005-9) and President of the Portuguese Association for Regional Development (APDR). He was a member of the Portuguese Scientific Council for the Social Sciences and Humanities (CCCSH - FCT) and pro-rector of the University of Lisbon (2013-2017). He is a member the National Council for the Environment and Sustainability (CNADS) and of several scientific academies, including the Academia Europaea and the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon. At ICS-ULisboa, he coordinated the "Environment, Territory and Society" Research Group, which has a strong research-teaching-outreach integration. He currently coordinates the Council of the ICS Observatories, which are the main tools for open science and public engagement in this Institute. In the past years he has participated in international and national research projects (as coordinator, team member or external adviser), based on competitive funding from FP7, H2020, EEA Grants, Portuguese and Spanish national, regional and local authorities, and foundations. These thematically diversified projects share three main objectives: (i) to contribute to strategic thinking about new futures, (ii) to stimulate processes of participatory public decision-making (citizens, stakeholders), and (iii) to inform and evaluate public policies.