Bárbara graduated in May 2018 with an MA in Human Rights Studies and was the recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship. Her studies focused on forced displacement and migration. Her thesis on Portugal’s role in the European Refugee Crisis was among the first in the North American academy tackling this research topic. During her time at Columbia University, she was also awarded the GSAS Fall Award for academic merit and served as teaching assistant to the Department of Political Science’s undergraduate class on the Introduction of Human Rights.
After finishing her degree, Bárbara moved to Prishtina, Kosovo for a year. As Research Fellow at the Group for Legal and Political Studies she was dedicated to international and European integration issues, primarily the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue and the EU enlargement strategy. She has also collaborated with the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Portuguese Delegation to the EU as external expert on the Western Balkans dossier.
Since August 2019 Bárbara has been working for the Operations Division at NATO, in Brussels, Belgium. Her work focuses on defense institution and capacity building of partner countries in the realm of education and anti-corruption. She mainly works with programmes in Iraq and the Western Balkans in cooperation with field missions and local experts.
