Boaventura de Sousa Santos is a distinguished legal scholar and Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. He is one of the founders of the World Social Forum. He has written and published widely on issues of global justice and its relationship to the necessity for an ecology of knowledge systems. As well as being a brilliant scholar he has worked for social justice in social movements around the world, including amongst the favelas of Brazil and with indigenous and peasant communities in different parts of the world.