BOAVENTURA DE SOUSA SANTOS is Professor of Sociology, University of Coimbra (Portugal), Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Global Legal Scholar at the University of Warwick. He is director of the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra and has written and published widely on the issues of globalization, sociology of law and the state, epistemology, social movements and the World Social Forum. He has been awarded several prizes, most recently the Science and Technology Prize of Mexico, 2010  and the Kalven Jr. Prize of the Law and Society Association, 2011. His most recent books in English include The Rise of the Global Left: The World Social Forum and Beyond (Zed Books, 2006); Democratizing Democracy: Beyond the Liberal Democratic Canon (Verso, 2005); Another Production is Possible: Beyond the Capitalist Canon (Verso, 2006); Another Knowledge is Possible: Beyond Northern Epistemologies (Verso 2007); and Voices of the World (Verso 2010).