She is Associate Professor of Medieval History at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of Universidade Nova de Lisboa. From 1991 to 2011 she was a lecturer at the Universidade Aberta, where she taught in the area of Medieval History, set up and coordinated the Master's Degree in Medieval Studies: Studies on Power (2005-2007), and where she was elected Director of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences for the period 2006-2009. In this role, she presided over the Bologna reform of the 1st and 2nd cycle courses taught in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences and the conversion of the entire teaching offer to e-learning. Between October 2001 and October 2003 she was Director of the Camões Centre for Portuguese Language and Culture in Oxford, where she was also a Fellow of St. John's College and a lecturer in the History Department of that University (Congregation), which awarded her an MA in History during her time there. She joined NOVA FCSH in August 2011 as an Assistant Professor and has been teaching in her area of specialisation in the three cycles of studies of the History course. Between June 2016 and July 2021 she was Director of the Institute of Medieval Studies at the same university, after having been executive secretary and deputy director of the same research unit between 2011 and 2015. She completed her Master's degree in Medieval History in 1990 at the FCSH of Universidade Nova de Lisboa, with a thesis on Esgueira, a village in the 15th century, and completed her PhD, also in Medieval History, at Universidade Aberta, in 2000, with a thesis on the construction of royal powers in 12th and 13th century Portugal. Her personal areas of research are the construction of royal power and the ecclesiastical elites linked to political power, relations between the Papacy and Portugal until the mid-13th century, the creation of identities and the processes of institutionalisation of power, areas in which she has published regularly. She has published more than 70 chapters and articles in national and international books and journals. She is the author of three individual books, four in collaboration with other colleagues and has co-coordinated five collaborative volumes. She is a member of the Portuguese Academy of History in the category of Corresponding Academic and of the Portuguese Society of Medieval Studies where she is a member of the Direction Board (vogal). She is an integrated researcher at the Institute of Medieval Studies at FCSH/UNL, where she is also replacement deputy director.