Paula Tavares is a Professor, Artist and Researcher. She obtained her PhD degree in Fine Arts from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Vigo, in 2006, with the thesis "The complex relations between art and politics in western culture. The political art as an institutional contradiction.” She graduated in Drawing from the Artistic Superior School of Porto (ESAP) in 1994, and she made her second graduation in Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Porto in 1999. From 1999 to 2004, she taught Drawing and Painting in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Porto. Since 2007, she has been working as a Professor in Design areas at the Polytechnic University of Cávado and Ave, Portugal, where since January 2022, she assumes the position of Vice President for Internationalization, Communication and Culture. She is also leading the project RUN-EU (European University) at IPCA. She was Dean at the IPCA’s Design School from 2015 to 2022. In January 2017, she joined the ID+ Research Institute for Design, Media and Culture (http://www.idmais.org/pt-pt/), where she is Director of IPCA’s HUB. Her research interests are focused on 1. Applied Research in Art and Design; 2. Drawing / Illustration and Animation; 3. Gender and Politics. She has been involved in a set of funded projects in the design area as well artistic projects with different institutions and entities. She is also the General Chair of CONFIA - International Conference on Illustration and Animation (annual conference since 2012) (http://www.confia.ipca.pt/). She participated in several design competitions - national and international, academic and professional - as a jury. She is represented as an artist in several collections and has been participating in exhibitions and artistic events since the 1990s.