Isabel Cristina Pinto Mateus earned her PhD in Sciences of Literature, specializing in Modern and Contemporary Portuguese Literature, from University of Minho in 2006. Her thesis focused on the poetics of the grotesque in Fialho de Almeida's writing. In 1984, Isabel Cristina Mateus graduated in Modern Languages and Literatures (Portuguese and French) from the University of Coimbra, and completed successfully the Pedagogical Aptitude and Scientific Capacity exams at University of Minho in 1989. Since 2006, she has been working as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Portuguese Studies of the School of Arts and Humanities at University of Minho. She is the author of the essay "Kodakização" and Depolarization of Reality: Towards a Poetics of the Grotesque in the Work of Fialho de Almeida, Leya / Caminho 2008 which won the Óscar Lopes Prize in 2007 and the Pen Clube Essay Prize in 2008. She published the literary travel guides Discovering Minho with Maria Ondina Braga (Consórcio MinhoIn, 2023) and Travel with...Maria Ondina Braga (Viajar com...Maria Ondina Braga), DRCN/Opera Omnia, 2018. She is Senior Researcher at the Center for Humanistic Studies (CEHUM), in the Portuguese Language Poetics (PLP) research group she has coordinated from 2020-2023. She coordinates the research project "Autobiography, life-writing and Interculturality: Maria Ondina Braga". She is member of 2i Group integrating the Liminalities Man-Animal-Machine (LIHAM) research team. She develops research in the areas of modern and contemporary Portuguese literature, from the 19th to the 21st centuries, with particular emphasis on the work of Maria Ondina Braga. Her main research is focused on feminine writing, memory, autobiography and life-writing, animal studies, grotesque studies and modernism. She co-coordinates the edition of the Complete Works of Maria Ondina Braga (VII Vols) by INCM, of which two of them have already been published: "Autobiografias Ficcionais" (Fictional Autobiographies), VOL. I, 2022, and "Biografias no Feminino" (Feminine Biographies), Vol. II, 2023. She is co-editor, with Claire Williams (University of Oxford- St Peter's College) of "Biografias no Feminino": Complete Works of Maria Ondina Braga, VOL. II, Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional, 2023 and is appointed member of the Organizing Committee for the centenary celebrations of Maria Ondina Braga (University of Minho, VRT/JAS-06/2022). She has collaborated in national and international journals, where she has published several studies on modern and contemporary portuguese writers, namely Fialho de Almeida, Raul Brandão, Aquilino Ribeiro, Maria Gabriela Llansol, David Mourão-Ferreira, José Saramago, Dulce Maria Cardoso and Maria Ondina Braga. Isabel Cristina Mateus is co-editor of the monographic volumes Maria Ondina Braga: (re) reading of a work (Museu Nogueira da Silva, 2017) and Maria Ondina Braga: Travels and Cultures in Dialogue (Museu Nogueira da Silva, 2019). She is also co-editor of 2i: Identity and Intermediality Studies, "Literature and Photography: Other Cartographies of Seeing, Vol. 3, nº 4, 2021 (CEHUM) and of the Literature, Cinema and Comics Series: Dogs and Imaginary; Animal Figures and The Esoteric Imaginary from the Hespérides collection, CEHUM. She is Associate Member do CCWW (Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing), Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies. School of Advanced Study. University of London and member of the Animots network, directed by Anne Simon (CNRS, CRAL, CNRS/EHESS-France). Since 2017, Isabel Cristina is member of the boarding directors of the Portuguese Writers Association (Associação Portuguesa de Escritores, APE) and consulting jury member of the publishing program (LATE) of Camões Institute (Portuguese Government). She is currently member of the jury of Camões Prize (2023-2024), in representation of Portugal. She is the author of Rear Window: Chronicles of Lockdown (Labirinto, 2021).