Bernardo Pinto da Cruz holds a PhD in Global Studies from NOVA University of Lisbon. His doctoral dissertation examined violence moderation, resettlement policies, and state formation during Angola’s anti-colonial war, combining archival research with comparative and theoretical debates on counterinsurgency and institutional development. He is a postdoctoral researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations (IPRI-NOVA) and an Invited Assistant Professor at NOVA University of Lisbon. He is Co-PI of the FCT-funded project JUSELTRA, which analyzes the long-term socioeconomic and institutional effects of Portuguese colonialism in Africa, with a comparative focus on justice systems, electrification, and transport infrastructures in Cape Verde, Angola, and Mozambique. His research on colonial development, forced resettlement, penal concentration, and violence moderation has been published in international journals such as The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Comparativ, E-Journal of Portuguese History, and Portuguese Studies Review. His research integrates the study of colonial governance and development with the analysis of contemporary political processes, including democratization, transitional justice, migration, global governance, and the enduring institutional and political legacies of empire in present-day state capacity and public opinion. He is co-author of Políticas Coloniais em Tempo de Revoltas (Afrontamento, 2016), editor of Descontrolo em Luanda: Urbanismo, Polícia e Lazeres nos Musseques do Império (Outro Modo, 2020), and co-author of A Democracia na Europa (IDN, 2018). He teaches at undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral levels in Global Studies, Political Science and International Relations, and Migration Studies at NOVA University of Lisbon. In Spring 2024, he was the FLAD/Saab Visiting Professor in Portuguese Studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.