Born in northern Portugal, JPC was brought up in Mozambique and studied in South Africa (BA Hons 1977, Univ. Witwatersrand, Johannesburg). His doctorate (Oxford 1982) was written under the supervision of John Campbell and Rodney Needham and was published as Sons of Adam, Daughters of Eve: the peasant worldview of Alto Minho (Clarendon Press 1986). He carried out his Habilitation at the University of Lisbon (2001).

He has held academic posts in Portugal and the United Kingdom. He has been Visiting Professor at various universities in Brazil, Spain, Mozambique and Macau.
He was co-founder of the Anthropology Departments of ISCTE and Coimbra; founding President of the Portuguese Association of Anthropology (1988-91); founding member, later Secretary (1994-96) and, later still, President of the European Association of Social Anthropology (2003-04); and he was founder and Rector of the Universidade Atlântica (1996-97).

He was Malinowski Memorial Lecturer (London School of Economics and Political Science, 1992); Distinguished Speaker (Society for the Anthropology of Europe, AAA, 1992); Stirling Memorial Lecturer, (University of Kent, UK, 2003); Oração de Sapiência (Univ. Lisbon 1999) and Inaugural Lecturer (Program of Postgraduation in Social Anthropology, UNICAMP, Brazil, 2006). He was President of the Scientific Council of ICS from 1997 to 2004.

His thematic interests are: the relation between symbolic thought and social power; family and kinship in a comparative perspective; ethnicity in colonial and post-colonial contexts. His first work was a monograph on rural society in the Alto Minho (Portugal). He followed that with a comparative study of the family in Portugal and southern Europe and, later still, with a study of ethnicity in Macao during the period of transition to Chinese rule. More recently he has written on Mozambique and the colonial transition and is currently engaged in a research project entitled "Names and Colours: Complexity of identity and Personal naming in Bahia (Brazil)".

JPC is Honorary Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute; Honorary Member of the European Association of Social Anthropologists and Miembro Correspondiente of the Real Academia de Ciencias Morales y Politicas (Spain).