Isabel de Pina Baleiras

e-mail | bbcampos2@gmail.com

Isabel de Pina Baleiras completed the Master in Medieval History in 2008 at the University of Lisbon (UL), Degree in History in 1990 at the UL, and the ‘Diplôme d’Études Françaises’ (Bach.) in 1994 at the Institut Franco-Portugais in Lisbon. Between 1994-96, she completed the Specialization Course in Theater Studies, and finished in 2000 the curricular part of the Master in Theater Studies at UL. She is a medieval History researcher (late 14th century), in the Research Group “Court Studies and Diplomacy” at the Center of History of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lisbon and a collaborating member of the group “Space and Powers” of Institute of Medieval Studies of the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the New University of Lisbon.

Isabel PB’ research areas are centred on Political, Social and Mentality History, as well as History of Gender. In her master’s degree (2008), she studied the political power of Queen Leonor Teles (1350? -1410?), wife of Fernando I of Portugal (1345-1383); in her biography “Leonor Teles, an unexpected queen”, 2012, she extended the study of Leonor Teles’ political career to an attempt to reconstruct her life, a work that received the Lusitania prize from the Portuguese Academy of History (2012). She presented papers about the political power of Leonor Teles; Infant Beatriz, her daughter; truce and peace between Portugal and Castile and the issue of Portuguese exiles (1383-1431); infants of Portugal, João and Dinis, King Fernando’s half-brothers. Isabel PB published book chapters such as: “Portugal, 1385- A people’s choice or coup d’état?” (2019, Routledge, 9781138490574); “Love, calumnies, murders, war, ambition and survival at the court of King Fernando and Queen Leonor Teles of Portugal (1367-84)” (2018, Brill Publishers, ISBN 978-90-04-31432-0); “The marriages of Infant Beatriz” (2017, ISBN: 978-972-42- 5120-2);  “Leonor Teles: the myth of the bad woman and the history of the political woman” (University of Évora, 2014, ISBN: 978-989-96532-4-5); “The political role of a Portuguese Queen in late fourteenth century” (2013, Palgrave Macmillan).

Since 2016, Isabel PB has dedicated herself to a doctorate at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lisbon, whose provisional title is “Fernando I de Portugal (1367-1383): practice and awareness of power” Her supervisor is Professor Doctor Manuela Santos Silva (CH-FLUL); and her co-advisor, Professor Doctor Bernardo Vasconcelos e Sousa (IEM-FCSH-UNL). The work was submitted in the end of December 2024 and focuses on the study of the political power of King Fernando I of Portugal (1367-1383), namely his executive, legislative and judicial practices, as well as his relationship with the various social groups – nobility, clergy, councils, jews, moors, women – and with his royal peers. The first part of the thesis analyses the international context of the reign and its warlike and diplomatic involvement in the Hundred Years’ War and the Western Schism. In the second part, the governing action of the Fernandina Crown in the kingdom is analysed and, in the third part, the type of royal power exercised is reflected on.