Biography

Rita Sampaio da Nóvoa is currently a PhD researcher at the VINCULUM project, funded by the ERC and hosted by NOVA University Lisbon.

She has a PhD in Historical Archivistics from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and NOVA University Lisbon. Her research has focused on pre-modern family archives and the epistemologies of historical knowledge relating to the implications of archival (il)literacy in the interpretation of the past. This research path led her to a three-year postdoctoral individual research project at University of Porto, which allowed her to further her understanding of pre-modern families as information producing institutions.

Seeking to contribute to higher education and knowledge transfer, she has co-coordinated a Post-Graduation in Historical Archiving, has well as several other training courses and resources, working briefly as Invited Assistant Professor at NOVA. She is also former Sub-director of NOVA FCSH’s Institute for Medieval Studies.

Having dedicated her MA to the study of medieval leper houses, she has maintained the history of contagious diseases as a secondary research interest, contributing over the years with a handful of academic and non-academic articles and presentations.

Research fields

• Historical Archiving
• Family archives
• Pre-modern archives

Selected publications

• Rosa, Maria de Lurdes, Rita Sampaio da Nóvoa & Abel Rodrigues (Eds.). Caminhos da Arquivística Histórica I: materialidades, contextos de produção de informação, representações documentais [Special Issue]. Boletim do Arquivo da Universidade de Coimbra 36 (2023). [link]🔓
• Nóvoa, Rita Sampaio da, “Les archives Gama Lobo Salema et les traces documentaires de la famille Queimado de Vilalobos,” in Les archives familiales dans l’Occident médiéval et moderne. Trésor, arsenal, mémorial, directed by Véronique Lamazou-Duplan, 269-279. Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2021. [link]🔓
• Rosa, Maria de Lurdes, Rita Sampaio da Nóvoa, Alice Borges Gago & Maria João Andrade e Sousa (Coords.). Recovered Voices, Newfound Questions: Family archives and historical research. Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra, 2019. [link]🔓
• Nóvoa, Rita Sampaio da & Maria de Lurdes Rosa. “O estudo dos arquivos de família de Antigo Regime em Portugal: percursos e temas de investigação.” Revista Brasileira de História 38 (2018). [link]🔓

Main projects

• Researcher of the project “VINCULUM. Entailing Perpetuity: Family, Power, Identity. The Social Agency of a Corporate Body (Southern Europe, 14th-17th Centuries)” — Coordinated by Maria de Lurdes Rosa (IHC — NOVA FCSH) and funded by the European Research Council (Grant agreement ID: 819734). [link]
• Researcher of the project “ARCHIFAM. Les archives de famille en péninsule Ibérique (XIIIe-XVIIe siècles)” [Family archives in the Iberian Peninsula (13th-17th centuries)] — Coordinated by Véronique Lamazou-Duplan (Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour) and funded by the École des hautes études hispaniques et ibériques (Casa de Velázquez). 2013-2015
• Researcher of the project “INVENT.ARQ — Inventários de arquivos de família, sécs. XV-XIX: de gestão e prova a memórias perdidas. Repensando o arquivo pré-moderno” [Inventories of family archives, 15th-19th centuries: from management and proof to lost memories. Rethinking the pre-modern archive] — Coordinated by Maria de Lurdes Rosa (IHC — NOVA FCSH), hosted by IEM — NOVA FCSH and funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (EXPL/EPHHIS/0178/2013). 2014-2015 [link]