Maria do Carmo Piçarra has a PhD, a master's degree and a degree in Communication Sciences from FCSH-UNL, in addition to having done post-doctoral research (2015-2018) in Communication Sciences at CECS-U. Minho and CFAC-U. Reading.

She was assistant to the presidency of the Instituto de Cinema, Audiovisual e Multimédia (1998-1999), founder and co-editor (2012-2018) of ANIKI – Revista Portuguesa da Imagem em Movimento and is a film critic and programmer.

She received a scholarship from the FCT (doctoral and post-doctoral studies) and from the Gulbenkian Fine Arts Service, with a scholarship from Fundação Oriente in 2018-19.

He taught at ISCTE-IUL (2012-2016) and at Escola Superior de Educação – Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal (2014).

He published, among other titles and articles, “Ultramarine blues. Colonial propaganda and censorship in the cinema of the Estado Novo” (2015), “Salazar goes to cinemas I and II” (2006, 2011), and coordinated, with Jorge António, the Angola trilogy, “the birth of a nation” (2013, 2014, 2015) and, with Teresa Castro, “(Re)Imagining African Independence. Film, Visual Arts and the Fall of the Portuguese Empire” (2017).