Leonardo Avritzer was professor at the Department of Political Science of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil, and is senior visiting researcher at the Institute of Social and Political Studies (IESP), Brazil. Avritzer received his Ph.D. in political sociology from the New School for Social Research. He has published extensively on civil society and participation in Brazil. He is the author of many books among them “Democracy and the Public Space in Latin America” and “Participatory Institutions in Democratic Brazil”. He published in several journals among them Comparative Politics, Latin America Research Review, International Journal of Regional and Urban Research, Journal of Public Deliberation, Opinião Pública and Revista Dados. He was visiting professor at the University of Coimbra, University of Tulaine and Colegio de Mexico. He is the coordinator of Instituto da Democracia (Institute of Democracy), a research project based in four large public universities that surveys Brazilians on democratic habits and monitors social networks. His book “O Pendulo da Democracia no Brasil” won the Brazilian Political Association award of best book of the year.
Lucio R. Renno is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Political Science of the University of Brasília (2006-present), Brazil. He was Provost for Graduate Studies (2021-2024) and Director of the Institute of Political Science (2020). He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh (2004). Between 2015 and 2018, he was President of the Federal District Planning Company (Codeplan). He served as Assistant Professor at the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona (2005-2006) and as a postdoctoral researcher at the State University of New York - Stony Brook (2004-2005) and at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, Germany (2009-2010; 2011; 2013). He has been a visiting professor at Frei Univesitat, Berlin, Germany, and holds the Sergio Buarque de Holanda Chair at the Center for Latin American Studies; Australian National University, Canberra, Australia; Yokohama National University, Yokohama, Japan; University of Texas, Austin; Vanderbilt University, Tennessee; and University of Oxford, United Kingdom. He publishes on legislative politics, electoral behavior, and public opinion.