Cristina Roldão is a sociologist, invited professor at ESE-IPS and a researcher at CIES-IUL. Social inequalities at school are her main field of research, with a particular focus on the processes of exclusion and institutional racism that affect Afro-descendants in Portuguese society. These issues were addressed in her doctoral thesis and in recent research of which she was part , as "African School Pathways for Young People (PALOP) Accessing Higher Education" (2015). She was a member of the coordination section Classes, Inequalities and Public Policies at the Portuguese Association of Sociology. In addition to the academic space in stricto sensu, she has participated in the external evaluation of programs such as the Escolhas Program (2006/07) and the Educational Territories of Priority Intervention (2010/11); in prospective studies like the project "Impacts of the Reduction of the Number of Students / Class" (2017); was a member of the inicial team of the Observatory for the Pathways of Secondary School Students (2006/09); and has participated in the broad public debate on racism and ethnic-racial inequalities in Portuguese society.