Dr. Daniel Rio Tinto is a Lecturer at the School of International Relations (FGV RI), Fundação Getulio Vargas (São Paulo, Brazil), where he teaches courses on the fields of international security and African politics. He is also a non-resident Associate Researcher at the Center for International Studies (CEI-Iscte), in Lisbon.

Daniel received his Ph.D. in Political Science and International Studies from the University of Birmingham (UK) in 2017, where he worked with the Institute for Conflict, Cooperation and Security (ICCS). His doctoral thesis is entitled Tracing the Security Dilemma in Civil Wars: how fear and insecurity can lead to intra-state violence and evaluates the performance of the Security Dilemma as an explanation for the outbreak of violence in civil wars, drawing from the cases of post-decolonization violence in Angola and Mozambique. Daniel also holds a Master's in Political Science and International Relations from the School of Social Sciences and Humanities (NOVA FCSH), NOVA University of Lisbon, and a Bachelor's in International Relations from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio).

Daniel's broad research interests include International Relations Theory, International Security, Conflict Studies, Political Violence, Civil Wars & Intra-State Conflicts, Rebel & Criminal Governance, Nuclear Politics, The Changing Character of War, Insurgencies & Asymmetric Warfare, Peace Operations, Case-study Methodology and Process Tracing Techniques. His regional expertise covers sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

Previously, he was a Nuclear Security Fellow (Stanton Foundation) at FGV RI, where he worked on a project on the impact of armed violence and criminal activities on the nuclear security challenges and policies, particularly looking at Brazil's context, and part of a wider project on the relationship between nuclear politics and internal conflict. Previously, Daniel has contributed to the Brazilian Naval War College (EGN), the Brazilian Peace Operations Joint Training Center (CCOPAB), the Portuguese Institute of International Relations (IPRI), the Portuguese Institute for National Defence (IDN) and Oxford Analytica.