Biography

Patrícia Branco is a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, where she is part of Thematic Line 2 - Democracy, Justice and Human Rights. She holds a PhD in Sociology of Law within the "Law, Justice and Citizenship in the 21st Century" programme at the same university and is the author of 'Courts as Spaces of Recognition, Functionality and Access to Justice' (Porto: Vida Económica, 2015). She was a contracted researcher under the Scientific Employment Stimulus Programme (CEECIND/00126/2017), with the project "FORK. Food, Regulation, Kinship: considerations on contemporary law, families and parenthood through the lenses of food" (2019-2025), and a Postdoctoral Fellow funded by the FCT (SFRH/BPD/102236/2014), with the project "Courts, their communities and citizens: effectiveness in access to law and justice (territorial, spatial and symbolic) in the new judicial organisation reform". She is also a Former Fellow of the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities "Law as Culture" (University of Bonn, Germany), where she developed the project "Into, from and back again: a discussion on courthouse architecture, the image of justice and literature." Her research interests and publications focus on judicial architecture and spaces of justice; the transformations in family, children and youth law and its intersections with gender, juvenile delinquency and crime; the relationship between law and the humanities; and the interplay between food and law. Together with Trentini and Catalan, she co-edited the book Law and Food: from field to table - citizenship, consumption, health and social exclusion (Belo Horizonte: Editora Fórum, 2023).