João Francisco Silva Sousa Pereira has been, since 2020, a PhD student in History, with a specialization in Contemporary History, at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (FCSH-UNL). He completed the Integrated Masters in Theology (2013-2018). He concluded this cycle of studies with the presentation of the dissertation A Catholic politician in the time of Enlightenment: Religion in Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo. Since 2020, he has been a researcher at the Center for Religious History Studies (UCP-CEHR) and a researcher at the Center for Functional Ecology (CEF-UC) at the FCSH-UNL hub corresponding to the History, Territories and Communities (HTC) center. He is also a PhD Fellow at the Foundation for Science and Technology. He has worked on various aspects of resistance to the Estado Novo. His preferred areas of research are the local history of the Setúbal region, religious history and the history of Portuguese dioceses. He has focused his study on the history of the process of creating the diocese of Setúbal (1966-1975).