Elisa Reis is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Science and of the World Academy of Sciences for the Advancement of Science in the Developing Countries (TWAS).

Former Vice-President of the International Science Council (2018-2021), and former Vice-President of the International Social Science Council (2015-2018), she is an active member of the International Panel on Social Progress (www.ipsp.org). Reis is professor of political sociology at the Graduate Program in Sociology and Anthropology at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), where she also chairs the Interdisciplinary Center for Studies on Inequality (NIED). She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT/USA),  carried out postdoctoral studies at the Universitá degli Studi di Firenze (Italy). and has taught as visiting professor at University of California at San Diego, Columbia University, MIT, Ludwig Maximilian Universitat in Munich,  and has collaborated with researchers at several research centers in Europe and the United States. She is the author of a long list of articles published in specialized journals in Brazil and abroad, and a member of the editorial board of international journals in China, France, Portugal, Spain, the United States and Brazil. In 2000, he received the Grand Cross of the National Order of Scientific Merit from the Ministry of Science and Technology, in 2017 the Florestan Fernandes Prize Award for life career achievement from the Brazilian Society of Sociology, and in 2021 the Pierucci Prize Award for life career achievement from the National Association for the Social Sciences (ANPOCS).