I was born and bred in Chaves, an ancient small town located in the North of Portugal, where I spent my childhood and adolescence. There I lived till the conclusion of my Secondary Education at Escola Secundária Fernão de Magalhães.
Then, I moved to Porto in order to study Law at Universidade Católica Portuguesa. After graduating, I started my professional activity as a junior lawyer. Actually, Porto is the town I’ve been living, together with my wife, up to the present.
A few years after graduating, I became interested in research areas other than Law, so I entered Universidade do Minho where I obtained an Msc degree in European Studies, after presentating a dissertation concerning the relationship between the European Union and the United States.
By the time, I had also started a professional career oriented towards two different areas: business on the one hand and teaching on the other. While working as a senior executive for an insurance company, I was also giving lectures of Law, European Studies and International Relations at private schools of Higher Education.
Some years later, I obtained a PhD degree at Universidade do Minho in Political Science and International Relations, after the presentation of a thesis about the Security of Western Europe. By the time, I had decided that academic research was definitely my cup of tea, so I put an end to my business career both as senior executive and as a lawyer.
Since then, my professional life has been devoted to researching, writing and lessons giving. Currently, I am Non-aggregated Professor at ISCET-Instituto Superior de Ciências Empresariais e do Turismo in Porto, where I also held the positions of Head of Scientific Board and member of the Editorial Board of Percursos & Ideias, an academic magazine. I am also professor at ISLA-Instituto Superior de Línguas e Administração.
My current research subjects are mainly related with the International Relations field and I have draft several academic papers published at Relações Internacionais, Política Internacional, Nação & Defesa and História.
Up to the present, I have also written and published four books in the academic fields of my specialization: Western Europe’s Security: a Multidimensional Euro-Atlantic Architecture (Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian and Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Lisbon, ISBN 972-31-0993-X, November 2002); International Relations Theories: from Classical Approach to the Post-Positivist Debate (Livraria Almedina, Coimbra, ISBN 972-40-2176-9, May 2004); Turkey: Identity Metamorphosis (Imprensa de Ciências Sociais of the Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Lisbon, ISBN 972-671-148-7, May 2005); and Principles of International Political Economy (Livraria Almedina, Coimbra, ISBN 972-40-2609-4, September 2005).
I have also followed a Course of National Defence at the IDN-Instituto da Defesa Nacional, and I obtained a diploma of Auditor of National Defence.
For the moment, I am focusing my attention on the relations between Multiculturalism and Societal Security in Europe.