Full Professor of Culture Studies and the current Rector of Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP). She holds a B.A. in Modern Languages and Literatures from the University of Lisbon (1987), and an M.A. in German Studies from the same university (1992), as well as a PhD in German Language and Culture from UCP (2001). She was Guest Professor in Germany (Saarbruecken, Munich), United Kingdom, Ireland (National University of Ireland), Italy (Univ. Ca Foscari, Venice), in Brasil (PUC-Rio) and in the USA (U. Pennsilvania and U. Stanford). She is furthermore an Honorary Fellow at the School of Advanced Studies of the University of London. From 2005 to 2012 she was the Dean of the Faculty of Human Sciences at the UCP. She has held numerous visiting professorships at universities in the U.S., Germany, Brazil, Italy, Ireland and Wales. She was a founder of The Lisbon Consortium network and leads the International Doctoral Degree Program in Culture Studies. She is also a senior researcher and founder of the Research Centre for Communication and Culture.