Rui Manuel Monteiro Lopes Ramos was born in 1962, in Torres Vedras, Portugal. He holds a degree in History from the New University of Lisbon (1985) and a doctorate in Politics from the University of Oxford (1997). Currently, he is a Senior Fellow Researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences, the University of Lisbon, where he has held research positions since 1986. Formerly he was a Junior Lecturer in history at the Faculty of Humanities, the University of Lisbon (1985/86). He was also a Guest Professor at the Faculty of Law, the New University of Lisbon (1998-2001), and at the Institute of Political Studies, the Portuguese Catholic University (since 2001). At the Institute of Social Sciences, he sat on the Executive Committee of the Scientific Board (2001-2004), the Post-Graduate Committee (1998-2000) and the Editorial Board of the academic journal, Análise Social (2003-2004). As an historian, he specializes in the history of Portugal in the 19th and 20th centuries, concentrating on political and cultural subjects. He has dedicated himself in particular to researching the last years of the Constitutional Monarchy (1890-1910) and the First Republic (1910-1926). He is also interested in the history of Political Ideas in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, a subject on which he as organized several seminars at the Institute of Social Sciences within the Masters and Doctorate programme in Comparative Politics. He is author of dozens of articles published in Portuguese and foreign academic journals, and of several books, including A Segunda Fundação (The Second Foundation), volume VI of História de Portugal (History of Portugal), edited by José Mattoso (1994), João Franco e o Fracasso do Reformismo Liberal (João Franco and the Failure of Liberal Reformism) (2001), and Dom Carlos, in the series "Reis de Portugal" (Monarchs of Portugal) (2006). He was one of the editors of Dicionário Biográfico Parlamentar: A Monarquia Constitucional (Biographical Parliamentary Dictionary: The Constitutional Monarchy) (2004-2005). He is currently part of the team of the international research project El Léxico Político y Social de la Modernidad Iberoamericana [Proyecto Iberconceptos], which unites researchers from dozens of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin-American universities with a view to the creation of a dictionary of the history of political and social ideas in the Iberian-American world between 1750 and 1870. He was one of the founders and a member of the editorial board of the academic journal Penélope: Revista de História e Ciências Sociais (1988-2006) and one of the organizers of two major international conferences on the Social History of the Elites (in 1991 and 2003). In October 2002, he was awarded the distinction of Burgen Scholar by the Academia Europaea "in recognition of excellent academic achievement". Apart from his university and historical research activities, he has been writing a weekly column in the national daily newspaper Público since 2006, and was a regular contributor to the monthly magazine of debate and ideas Atlântico between 2005 and 2008. He was also author of the 12 episode television series "O Portugal de...", shown at prime time on RTP1, the Portuguese public broadcast corporation.