Rita Almeida de Carvalho is a researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Lisbon (ICS-UL) and holds a PhD in Contemporary History from the Nova University of Lisbon. Her work focuses on the Estado Novo and European dictatorships during the interwar period. After dedicating herself to studying the relationships between the state and the church, political elites, and decision-making processes, she has focused her research on the relationship between architecture and political power in Portugal, as well as in authoritarian and totalitarian political regimes of the interwar period. On this topic, in 2024, she began a research project titled "Building Salazar’s People: Architecture, Nationalism, and National Identity (1932-1945)" as Principal Investigator, funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (2022.03543.PTDC).

Rita Almeida de Carvalho also holds postgraduate qualifications in archival science. In this capacity, she led the team that undertook the reconstruction and cataloguing of the archives of the Ministry of Overseas Affairs, under the scientific coordination of José Mattoso, and she was in charge of the Social History Archive at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon from 2012 to 2022.

Between 2023 and 2024, she was also among the select group of historians who collaborated with the Independent Commission for the Study of Sexual Abuse Against Children in the Portuguese Catholic Church in examining the Church’s archives. Additionally, she served as a deputy to the Commissioner for the Commemorations of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the 25th of April 1975.

Activity’s area: Comparative and transnational history, cultural history, urban planning and architecture, generic fascism, nationalism