Biography

Bárbara Direito, PhD from the University of Lisbon, has been an Assistant Researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History since December 2025, where she is part of the Research Group on the History of Science, Technology, and Environment.

Between September 2017 and August 2019, she was a postdoctoral researcher, and between September 2019 and October 2025, she was a CEEC researcher at CIUHCT — NOVA SST, where she conducted research on livestock farming and veterinary policies in colonial Mozambique. She has been interested in different topics related to the history of Mozambique in the 19th and 20th centuries and, more recently, the history of Portugal in the same period, combining reflections on the environment, economy, health, and science. In 2020, she published the book Terra e colonialismo em Moçambique – A região de Manica e Sofala sob a Companhia de Moçambique, 1892-1942 (Lisbon, ICS), based on her doctoral research. She has participated in several national and international research projects, most recently the project CATTLE IN MOTION: Knowledge, circulation and environments in the history of cattle in Portugal, 1750-1960, of which she is the principal investigator.

Research fields

• Colonialism in Africa
• Environmental History
• History of science
• Social and economic history

Selected publications

• Direito, Bárbara, “From Squatters to Smallholders? Configurations of African Land Access in Central and Southern Colonial Mozambique,” in Colonial Land Legacies in the Portuguese-Speaking World, edited by Susanna Barnes and Laura S. Meitzner Yoder, 41-62. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2025. [PDF]🔓
• Direito, Bárbara. “Cattle Circulation, Beef Market Control Strategies, and African Agropastoralists in Southern Mozambique, 1900s–30s,” The Journal of African History 65 (2024): 191-206. [link]
• Direito, Bárbara. “‘A Livestock Country Cannot Be Improvised’: Cattle Improvement, Economic Ambitions, and the Environment in Southern Mozambique, 1910s–1940s,” South African Historical Journal 74 (2022): 205-230. [link]
• Direito, Bárbara. Terra e Colonialismo em Moçambique. A região de Manica e Sofala sob a Companhia de Moçambique, 1892-1942. Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2020. [link]

Main projects

• Coordinator of the project ‘CATTLE IN MOTION: Knowledge, circulation and environments in the history of cattle in Portugal, 1750-1960‘ — Hosted by CIUHCT and IHC and funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (2023.12421.PEX). 2025-2026
• Collaborator in the project ‘Constructing climate coloniality: Histories, knowledges and materialities of climate adaptation in southern Africa‘ — Coordinated by Matthew Hannaford (University of Nottingham) and funded by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI, MR/Y018281/1). 2024-2025
• Researcher in the project ‘Climate history of nineteenth-century Mozambique‘ — Coordinated by Matthew Hannaford (University of Nottingham) and funded by the British Academy and the Leverhulme Small Research Grants (SRG22220361). 2023-2024