MARIA PAULA MENESES is a Principal researcher at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra. A Mozambican scholar, she attended secondary school in Maputo, and later on did her graduate studies in Russia (MA in History from St. Petersburg University) and obtained her PhD in the USA, by Rutgers University. In 2009 she was a visiting scholar at EHSS, Paris. At the CES Maria Paula Meneses develops several research projects and teaches in two PhD programs, namely Postcolonialisms and Global Citizenship and Human Rights in the 21st th century. Internationally she co-coordinates, with Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Karina Bidaseca, CES-CLACSO e-learning specialization course on Epistemologies of the South. Her research focus on the political history and socio-legal complexity of southern Africa, especially in Mozambique, Angola and South Africa. At the heart of her interests are the relations between knowledge, power and societies, paying special attention to people who experienced the violence of the colonial encounter. Another of the topics in which she has been working focuses on the possibilities of decolonization of the university, a theme that he has addressed particularly from her African experience. Her work has been published in journals, books and reports in several countries, including Mozambique, Spain, Portugal, Senegal, USA, England, Germany, Colombia, amid others.