Maria Barreto Dávila is a post-doctoral researcher at CHAM – Centre for Humanities, currently working on the project “Gender, Space and Power: representations of female authority at the Portuguese Court (1438-1471). She has a PhD in History of The Portuguese Discoveries and Expansion, with the thesis “Ruling the Atlantic: The infanta Beatriz and the House of Viseu (1470-1485)”, from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, and holds a master's degree in Medieval History from the same institution. Her main research interests include Court Studies, regarding the relationship of women and power, during the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, Atlantic History, specially the beginning of the Portuguese Discoveries and the connection between women and the sea. She is also developing a research line concerning the study of women and war. Currently, she is working on a book about the infanta Beatriz of Portugal.
She is a member of the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship and of the Royal Studies Network.
She is a resarch team member of the H2020 RIse Project CONCHA (2018-2021).
She is the coordinator of the thematic line History of Women and Gender at CHAM - Centre for the Humanities, since January 2018.