Rita Seabra Brito is the Director of the Estoril Political Forum – The International Annual Meetings in Political Studies at the Institute for Political Studies of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa (IEP-UCP) in Lisbon.

She holds a Master’s degree in Political Science, with a thesis entitled “The Free and Virtuous Society in the Thought of John Paul II”, and was a visiting student at the University of Oxford (St Antony’s College) through the IEP-UCP exchange programme, supported by a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

She is an Associate Researcher at CIEP and, since 2010, a Teaching Assistant, collaborating with Professor Manuel Braga da Cruz on the undergraduate courses Political Systems and Regimes and Political Parties.

In 2006, she attended the month-long Tertio Millennio Seminar on the Free Society in Krakow, Poland, organised by the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington D.C.

Her main research areas include Catholic social doctrine, political regimes and systems, with a particular focus on political parties. She is a member of the Board of Patrons of the Instituto +Liberdade.