Carlos Branco is a retired Major-General of the Portuguese Army. He has extensive experience in political-military affairs and international relations, acquired over 10 years at the service of several international organizations. He was Director of the Division of Regional Cooperation and Security, NATO's Military Staff in Brussels, a quality in which he was responsible for strategic planning for NATO military cooperation. He was a spokesman for the NATO Force Commander in Afghanistan, and responsible for its Strategic Communication. He also served in the Military Division of the UN Secretariat, in New York, where while "Peacekeeping Affairs Officer" he was the desk officer of the UN missions in the Middle East (Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq / Kuwait). He also served at EUROFOR headquarters in Florence as an Intelligence analyst. He was an electoral monitor in Bosnia in the service of the OSCE and a UN military observer in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, before Dayton. Among other duties, he was Deputy Director of the National Defense Institute, Commander of the Infantry Regiment 13, in Vila Real, and served in the Command Regiment. He is a researcher at IPRI/NOVA and an associate researcher at IDN.
Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel. Head of the Oporto delegation of the National Defence Institute and Assistant Director of the National Defence Course.
Law degree from Universidade Católica Portuguesa and PhD in Political Science and International Relations from Universidade do Minho.
Researcher at IPRI-Portuguese Institute of International Relations - Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
Coordinating Professor at ISCET-Higher Institute of Business and Tourism Sciences.
Adjunct professor invited part-time at IPP-Instituto Politécnico do Porto.
He is the author of several books and scientific articles in the field of International Relations in the areas of Geopolitics, International Political Economy, European Union and International Law.
He collaborates with the press in the analysis of current international policy issues (Jornal Público and RTP2).
Extended CV (ORCID) available at http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5633-4443
José Manuel Freire Nogueira, Major General of the Army (Retired), Master in Strategy by ISCSP and PhD in International Relations by FCSH / UNL, has a vast military experience during which, among others, he experienced a field tour in Angola, was for several years a professor at the then IAEM and commanded the Field Artillery Battalion of the Mechanized Brigade, and also attended US Army school courses. He served in NATO twice, first as a Order of Battle analyst in SHAPE Intelligence Division and later served as military advisor to the Portuguese ambassador to the NATO HQ in Brussels, where he acted as the representative of the National Director of Armaments (also in the WEU) and as a member of the Senior Level Weapons Protection Group. As a general officer, he was Strategy Branch chief in IAEM, and served as Army Personnel Director and Co-Chairman of NATO's Defense Group on Proliferation, having completed his active career as Deputy Director of the National Defense Institute.
Since then, he has been President of the Portuguese Center of Geopolitics, professor at the Institute of Information Sciences and Administration (ISCIA) and, for ten years, Chairman of the International Relations Committee of the Geographic Society of Lisbon. He has collaborated with the Limes-Italian Journal of Geopolitics for several years and is the author or co-author of 9 books and over twenty articles in newspapers and journals. He was the coordinator of the MSc in Security, Defense and Conflict Resolution at ISCIA and is a professor and scientific co-coordinator of the Advanced Studies in Geopolitics Course at IDN / Autonomous University of Lisbon (UAL). He collaborates regularly with UAL and Universidade Lusíada. He was an advisor of several Mastership candidates and member of the Jury of Masters and PhDs and was (2019) Coordinator of the Sectorial Jury for the award of the "Scientific Research in Military Science" Award from the Military University Institute.
His main topics of interest are theoretical and applied geopolitics with special focus on Latin America and the Portuguese case, as well as other current issues.
Sabrina Evangelista Medeiros holds a doctorate in political science from IUPERJ (IESP), a master and a graduate degree in history from the Rio de Janeiro Federal University. Sabrina was a professor for 10 years at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and for 12 years at the Escola de Guerra Naval (licensed in 2020). He also made up the teaching staff of the Inter-American Defense College, of the Organization of American States (Washington, DC). His research topics are interagency cooperation, defense and security economics, security cooperation, and crisis and war simulations and games.