About

Heitor Pagliaro is a tenured Professor of Law at the Federal University of Goias (UFG), Brazil. He works in the fields of philosophy of law, political theory, and human rights theory, and also teaches legal research methods.

His research focuses on the normative justification of rights and on how theoretical frameworks shape legal reasoning, institutional design, and democratic practice. He has published over 20 peer-reviewed articles and more than 15 book chapters.

At UFG, he teaches at both undergraduate and doctoral levels in philosophy of law, political theory, and human rights theory. Since 2011, he has taught 100+ courses and has supervised 90+ researchers across undegraduate, master's, doctoral and postdoctoral levels.

He has been a visiting scholar at the Department of Government at the University of Texas (Austin, USA, 2024) and at the Department of Law, Politics, and Development at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna (Pisa, Italy, 2024).

He holds a PhD in Law from the University of Brasilia (UnB), Brazil (2018), with a dissertation on freedom and sovereignty in Rousseau. He also earned an MA in Philosophy from UFG (2013), with a thesis on contractualism and natural law in Rousseau, and a BA in Law from UFG (2010), with an undergraduate work on human rights theory.

He regularly collaborates with academic journals, as both editor and reviewer. He founded and directs the Latin American Human Rights Studies.

He has held key leadership roles in graduate education and research administration at UFG, including serving two elected terms as Director of the PhD Program in Human Rights (2023-2025) and previously as Deputy Director (2021-2023). He has also held appointments at UFG as Campus Director of Research and Graduate Programs (2021-2025), and Department Coordinator of Research and Graduate Programs (2018-2021). Currently, he is the Deputy Coordinator of a Graduate Certificate Program in Prison System Management at UFG.

He is a licensed attorney in Brazil (OAB-GO 32.571) and Portugal (OA 67768L). In Brazil, he served a three-year term as Vice President of the Human Rights Commission of the Brazilian Bar Association – Goias Chapter (2022–2024) and was appointed by the Governor of the State of Goias for a two-year term as member of the State Council on Human Rights, Racial Equality, and Anti-Discrimination of Goias, nominated by the Goias state governor (2022-2024), both in Brazil. He has also worked as a legal consultant in international law for the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (USA, 2018).