Maria Manuel Baptista is a professor at the University of Aveiro and has built a career marked by interdisciplinarity. She began her academic training in Philosophy, which provided her with a solid theoretical and epistemological foundation. During her master’s degree, she deepened her study of the social sciences applied to education, focusing on psychology, sociology, and anthropology, and wrote a dissertation in Social Psychology. Her PhD focused on methodologies in the humanities, and in 2013, as part of her habilitation examinations, she explored communication sciences and artistic studies. Her research and teaching focus on Cultural Studies, an area in which she has addressed topics such as Portuguese culture and cultural tourism. Since 2008, she has been deeply engaged in Cultural Studies and, in 2010, created Portugal’s first PhD programme in the field. She coordinates international networks with Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, and several European countries, contributing to the consolidation of the field globally. In recent years, she has focused on issues of gender, performance, and leisure studies. She currently directs the Research Centre for Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Aveiro.
