Biography

Post-doctoral research fellow for the TRANSMAT project. Between 2017 and 2023, she was a research fellow at the National Museum of Natural History and Science of the University of Lisbon, where she worked with Portuguese colonial scientific collections from the 19th and 20th centuries. In 2021, she completed her PhD thesis in History at NOVA FCSH, on the presence and political appropriation of extra-European animals at the Portuguese court in the 15th and 16th centuries. Her research focuses on the intersections between propaganda and natural history in imperial contexts, with an approach centred on relations between humans and non-human animals and on the processes of knowledge production and its multiple agents.

Research fields

• History of knowledge
• Visual culture
• Animal studies
• Imperial history

Selected publications

• Garrido, Ana, Catarina Mateus, Catarina Simões, Marta Costa & Rogério Abreu. “Património científico colonial num tempo pós-colonial. As coleções antropológicas e fotográficas do Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical,” Boletim ICOM Portugal 17 (2021): 52-65. [link] 🔓
• Simões, Catarina. “Imagens de Poder: Animais exóticos na cultura de corte em Portugal no Renascimento”. PhD Thesis in History, NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities, 2021. [link]🔓
• Simões, Catarina, “Non-European Animals and the Construction of Royalty at the Renaissance Portuguese Court,” in Animals and Courts. Europe, c. 1200–1800, edited by Mark Hengerer and Nadir Weber, 55-78. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2020. [link]

Main projects

• Post-doctoral research fellow for the “TRANSMAT — Transnational Materialities (1850-1930): Reconstituting collections and connecting histories” — Coordinated by Elisabete Pereira and funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology [PTDC/FER-HFC/2793/2020]. 2023-2024 [link]