Marinela Freitas is Assistant Professor of the Department of Anglo-American Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Margarida Losa Institute for Comparative Literature (ILCML), where she coordinates the research group Intersexualities. She is also a collaborator of CETAPS (Centre for English, Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies).

She is the author of Emily Dickinson e Luiza Neto Jorge: Quantas Faces? (Afrontamento, 2014), for which she received the PEN Club Award - Essay 2015.

She has co-edited several books and journals in the fields of Comparative Literature, Feminist Studies and Utopian Studies, among which are Legados e Heranças: Políticas (Inter)sexuais Hoje (with Ana Luísa Amaral, Maria de Lurdes Sampaio & Alexandra Moreira da Silva; Afrontamento, 2019); New Portuguese Letters to the World: International Reception (with Ana Luísa Amaral and Ana Paula Ferreira, Peter Lang, 2015), Novas Cartas Portuguesas Entre Portugal e o Mundo (with Ana Luísa Amaral, Dom Quixote, 2014) and Utopia Matters (with Fátima Vieira, UPorto, 2005).

She has also co-edited (with Ana Luísa Amaral) an anthology of poetry addressing gender and sexualities: Do Corpo: Outras Habitações. Identidades e Desejos Outros em Alguma Poesia Portuguesa (Assírio & Alvim, 2018; 343 pp.).

As a researcher, she has participated in several national and international research projects in the area of Comparative Literature, Feminist Studies and Utopian Studies. 

From 2015 to 2019, she developed a Post-doctoral project on Posthuman Studies, funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). She is currently a team member of the Project Extraterrestrial Post-Humanism: the Search for Alien Life in Astrobiology, Science-Fiction and Bio Art [2023.11185.PEX]; and Breaking the Code: Algorithmic Non-Normativity in Creative Digital Humanities [Dariah EU].

Since 2015, she co-coordinates She Thought It: Crossing Bodies in Sciences and Arts, a database with entries on women whose steps have significantly marked history in fields such as sciences, arts, music and literature (https://shethoughtit.ilcml.com/), hosted at the ILCML.


Research Areas (key words): Comparative Poetics, Twentieth-century Portuguese Poetry, North-American Poetry, Posthuman Studies, Literature and Science, Feminist and Queer Studies, Utopia and Gender