Carla Alferes Pinto is Researcher at NOVA FCSH. She is an Early Modern Art Historian currently developing the project "Dressing the Court: Costume, Gender, and Identity (s)" at CHAM – Centre for the Humanities. This project addresses costume as object of communication that contribute to the characterization of a certain temporal and spatial context on which results a discourse that, in itself, constitutes an idea of fashion. This project aims to focus on the objects, actors, actions, and narratives produced at the court in Early Modern Portugal that reflect fashion phenomenon and thus classifying, describing, and studying the use of clothing and artistic objects (accessories, shoes, hats, jewelry) that materialize the fashion system and assess gender (feminization / masculinization) and identity manifestations (normative discourses, ethos, behaviors, dynastic persistence / disruptions).
She is the author of several papers on the command, production, and use of artistic objects by elite women. Also, she is interested in the study of artistic relations between Portugal and India and the reception and representation of "Indo-Portuguese art" in Portuguese museums (19th-20th centuries).