On September 17th, 2018, CATÓLICA-LISBON launched the new Dean's Speaker Series, with one of the most discussed topics at the moment.

Invited by Nuno Fernandes, to discuss the theme "10 years after the financial crisis - what changed?", the special guest on the first edition of this initiative was the Minister of Finance and President of the Eurogroup, Mário Centeno.

In a crammed auditorium, the two distinguished authorities on the matter, were expected to entail a detailed analysis of the financial crisis that broke out in 2008 with the fall of Lehman Brothers, the euro crisis and the help of the troika. The conversation turned out to be much broader and to also address current issues and attempts to "financial futurology”.

Mário Centeno started out by introducing the issue of the financial crisis and how it suddenly assumed such proportions that "forced" Portugal to request economic and financial assistance from the "troika".

The Finance Minister also took the opportunity to talk about the current outlook both in Portugal and internationally. For Mário Centeno, the pressure of the financial markets in Italy will surely decrease once the government's fiscal plans for 2019 are known.

The President of the Eurogroup left a note of confidence while ensuring that this pressure and mistrust of the markets will not affect the Portuguese public debt.

The audience engaged very actively with interesting and thoughtful questions leading to a pleasant end of a busy day.

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During the Web Summit, Nuno Fernandes, invited to the School one of its most prestigious speakers - Lucas Joppa, Chief Environmental Officer at Microsoft – to debate yet another very interesting and enlightening subject:

“Artificial Intelligence for Earth”

The speed and scale at which environmental systems are changing, and the enormity of the human impact of those changes, requires a commensurate response in how society monitors, models, and manages Earth’s natural resources. A key component to that response will emerge from the fundamentals of AI – transforming how we collect data, convert those data into actionable information, and communicate that information across the world. By training increasingly sophisticated algorithms with this unprecedented collection of data on dedicated computational infrastructure, we can combine human and computer intelligence in a way that will allow us to make increasingly informed and optimal choices about today – and tomorrow. 

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The first digital session of this initiative had a very high-profile guest – Carlos Moedas, Member of the Board of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation – and originated a very interesting conversation about economic recovery, the path forward for Europe and how to achieve positive societal impact. This session took place on May 12th, 2020.

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The special guest of this session was Professor Miguel Poiares Maduro, former Minister of Regional Development and one of the most respected international thinkers in the interface between Law, Politics and Governance. Miguel Poiares Maduro joined UCP this year with the Vieira de Almeida Chair in Digital Governance. This sessions was focused on the guest's broad international experience, in particular on the crucial theme of resilience, effectiveness and governance of democracies in times of pandemic. This session took place on October 27th, 2020.

Bio: Miguel Poiares Maduro has a degree in Law from the University of Lisbon and a PhD in Law from the European University Institute, where he was Founder and Director of the Global Governance Program between 2010 and 2013 and is currently Director of the School of Transnational Governance. From 2013 to 2015, he was Deputy Minister to the Prime Minister and Minister of Regional Development in Portugal. From June 2016 to May 2017 he was Chairman of the new FIFA Governance and Review Committee. He was a member of the EU High Level Group on Media Freedom and Pluralism. He was a Professor at the London School of Economics, the Centre for Constitutional Studies in Madrid, and the Chicago Law School, and is a regular invited Professor at the Yale Law Faculty, the College of Europe and the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, where he holds the Vieira de Almeida Chair in Digital Governance.

To watch the video, click here