Cristina Brito is an environmental historian of the early modern period, focusing on oceans and aquatic animals, the Blue Humanities, and the Anthropocene. She is a senior researcher at CHAM –Centre for the Humanities (at NOVA FCSH, Lisbon) and an associated researcher at the Trinity Centre for Environmental Humanities (TCD, Dublin).

She uses large chronological and cross-cultural perspectives and global approaches to research the human history of marine life.

Her interests also include communication of science, outreach to wider society and the interconnection of art and science.

Among her most recent works is the book “Humans and Aquatic Animals in Early Modern Africa and Americas” – published by the Amsterdam University Press (2023) and a chapter in a collective volume edited by Brill on the “Natural history of whales in modern Portugal (2024)”.

Her research adopts an interdisciplinary, comparative and transcultural perspective.