João Cardoso Rosas has taught for many years mainly in Political Philosophy and connected disciplines, including in the History
of Social and Political Ideas, Contemporary Political Ideologies, Philosophy of Human Rights, and Normative and Applied Ethics.
He has supervised Masters’ students, PhD students and post-docs in these fields, and several of them now hold academic positions
in Portugal, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Brazil, Spain, and the United Kingdom. His first research interest was the political
thought of Karl Popper and other liberal thinkers from the 20th century. Later, he focused on the study of John Rawls’ theory
of justice and his libertarian and communitarian critics. He has been particularly interested in questions connected with
doctrinal pluralism and the value of stability in democracy as developed by Rawls and others. Over recent years his work has
turned to the analysis of ideologies and to the study of the history and philosophy of human rights. He edited and authored
several books and he published many articles and chapters of books, most of which in line with these basic interests. He
also has been interested in fostering the role of learned societies in consolidating a national community of researchers dealing
with politics and political ideas. As a consequence, he has often served in different capacities, including as Chair of the
Portuguese Political Science Association and as Chair of the Portuguese Philosophical Society. Furthermore, he has been involved
in the creation of several degree programmes at the University of Minho, including the recent MA in Political Philosophy.
At UMinho, he also has been active in the creation of research structures. In 2008, he established the Political Theory Group
and, in 2017, he founded, with his research fellows in this group, the Centre for Ethics, Politics and Society.