Elisa Reis is Ph.D in Political Science (MIT,1980), Professor of Political Sociology at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) Brazil, and chair of the Interdisciplinary Research Center for the Study of Social Inequality (NIED). She is former vice-president of the International Science Council and of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. She has received scholarships, from the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq.), the Research Council of the State of Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ), The Fulbright Commission, the Italian Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, to carry out research in a number of countries. Her major research interests are elite perceptions of poverty and inequality; current transformations of nation-states; and the evolving patterns of interaction between state, market, and civil society. She received the Life Career Prize of the Brazilian Sociological Association in 2017, and the Prize for Excellence in Research of the Brazilian National Association for the Social Sciences (ANPOCS) in 2021.