Aida Valadas de Lima, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology of the Sociology and Public Policies School of Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Iscte-Iul, PhD in Sociology by that same University Institute with a dissertation on Agriculture and Rurality in Portugal: 1970-2000. She a lecturer of Iscte-Iul in the Sociology course of the Sociology and Public Policies School and in the Master Degree of Environment and Sustainability Studies of the Social and Human Sciences School. She does research on Sociology, with emphasis on Rural Sociology and Environmental Sociology. In 1992, with Professor Afonso de Barros, she carried on the institutionalization of Environmental Sociology in the syllabus of the courses of Sociology and of Sociology and Planning of ISCTE. She has been the supervisor of various Master and PhD dissertations and research projects as well a member of examination juries of candidates for those levels of University Degrees. She was for several years a member of the Pedagogical Council and she has also been the Academic Coordinator of the 3^rd year of the Sociology course. She has published books as well articles in Portuguese and in English languages in various sociological journals. Se has organized and participated in numerous scientific meetings and has also made peer reviews for Portuguese and foreign scientific journals. She was a co-founder of OBSERVA – Society, Environment and Public Opinion, a research program created in 1996 and undertaken by ISCTE and ICS-UL, in which framework she coordinated various research projects. She has also been Research Assistant in the Rural Economics Research Center of the Gulbenkian Institute of Science (CEEA/IGC) and Researcher in the Territorial Studies Center (CET) of ISCTE. Currently, she is Associate Researcher of Cies-Iul/Iscte-Iul, and of ICS-UL.