Social Affairs

She is best known for her roles in «Slumdog Millionaire» (2008), for which she was nominated for a BAFTA award for Best Supporting Actress, and Planet of the Apes (2011). Before her acting career, she studied English literature, psychology and economics at St. Xavier's College in Bombay and worked as a model. In addition to her film work, especially in Hollywood productions, she promotes humanitarian causes around the world and is especially dedicated to women's rights and living conditions. She is a global ambassador for Plan International's «Because I AM a Girl» programme, which promotes gender equality to lift millions of girls out of poverty, and also collaborates with the NGO We Do It Together, which funds films and documentaries focused on women's empowerment.

A journalist with over 20 years' experience, she presents a political affairs programme on the American television channel TRT World and is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. She began her career as a political correspondent for a leading Middle Eastern newspaper based in the UK. She later joined the Aljazeera television channel in NY as Editor-in-Chief, where she covered the September 11 attacks. She was a journalist on the war scenes in Iraq and Afghanistan following the US invasion in 2003. She conducted in-depth interviews with senior US officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell. HER work included following the UN extensively, covering the Security Council and the General Assembly. For the UN, she travelled with Kofi Annan throughout the Middle East and Africa, with whom she carried out several in-depth interviews during his 10-year tenure. Her experience as a political journalist includes interviews with various heads of state and government, including Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Israeli President Shimon Peres, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Historian and Researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History (Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universidade Nova of Lisbon). Her research has focused on the Estado Novo (Portuguese New State), the World War II period, women and the political police (PIDE) during the Salazar and Caetano dictatorships.
She holds a PhD in Institutional History and Contemporary Politics from the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of Universidade Nova de Lisboa, a Master's Degree in Contemporary History (20th century) and a degree in History from the Faculty of Letters of Universidade Clássica de Lisboa.
She was awarded the Pessoa Prize in 2007 and the Seeds of Science Prize in the "Social and Human Sciences" category in 2009. In 2015, she was awarded the National Order of the Legion of Honour by the Government of France.
She is the author and co-author of several books, including From 25 April 1974 to 25 November 1975: Lesser-known Episodes, The Essential about the PIDE, The PIDE’s Informers, Holocaust and Spies in Portugal During World War II.

Last updated: March 2024

She has a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and enjoys being alive so much that she finds herself thinking of death quite frequently. Over the years, she has read a lot about the subject, which continues to intrigue her. She also has many other interests, ranging from literary translation to traditional typography. This is her fourth book, with other books in the works.

Last updated: October 2018

She has a PhD in Contemporary History and is a researcher at ICS-UL – the University of Lisbon Institute of Social Sciences. She works on the Estado Novo and is currently studying the association between architecture and politics, looking for analogies and connections between Salazarism and other inter-war dictatorships. At the same time, she has devoted herself to archive work and is responsible for the Social History Archive at ICS-UL.

Last updated: February 2019

She was born in Lisbon, where she got her Bachelor’s degree in Law, and she has worked in journalism for 25 years. She held the position of Society Editor and Lead Reporter, did film reviews and a weekly chronicle and she founded and managed the Cinema Final Cut website. She has been on the panel of judges at contests organised by ICA, which also funded three of her scripts. She made her début as a novelist with «What Matter the Fury of the Sea» (Teorema) a work that unanimously won the APE/DGLAB2013 Novel and Novella Grand Prize. Her second novel «You Can’t Live in a Cat's Eyes» (Teorema), a finalist in the Oceans Prize, won the Manuel de Boaventura Literary Prize and, again, APE/DGLAB the Novel and Novella Grand Prize 2016, thus entering the small group of Portuguese novelists to have been twice honoured. «Small Domestic Delusions» (Relógio d’Água), a collection of short stories, won the Camilo Castelo Branco/APE Short Story and Novel Award. Her latest novel «The Gesture You Make to Protect Your Head» (Relógio de Água) is a finalist candidate for the Oceans Award. She published a set of stories about war in July 2021: «Maps of Poorly Situated Places». She is the author of the cultural podcast Gross Domestic Happiness by Lisbon Municipal Council.

Last updated: February 2023

She has a PhD in Sociology, specialising in Development and Social Change, from the Nova School of Social Sciences and Humanities in Lisbon.
She is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at NOVA FCSH, where she coordinates the Master’s degree in Human Ecology and Contemporary Social Problems. She is an integrated researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences and has done research work on the subjects of ageing and the related social policies, family and intergenerational relations, as well as health.

Last updated: July 2024