Director

Professor Assunção Cristas holds a PhD in Private Law from NOVA School of Law. She was the Minister of Agriculture, Sea, Environment and Spatial Planning (2011-2013) and Minister of Agriculture and Sea (2013-2015) of the XX and XIX Portuguese Governments, period when she was responsible for the development of important legislation and public policies focused on the marine environment, such as the Portuguese legal framework on maritime spatial planning and management, and the National Strategy of the Sea 2013-2020.
Published relevant work on the matter, such as the paper “One Cannot Change the Wind, but One Can Always Adjust the Sail: The Role of Legal Framework in Developing a Blue Economy”, in the book Ocean Law and Policy: 20 years under UNCLOS. Currently, Professor Assunção Cristas is a lawyer and an Associate Professor at NOVA School of Law. She is the co-coordinator of the Master’s in Law and Economics of the Sea – Ocean Governance, where she lectures Ocean Policies and a researcher at CEDIS.