Maria Fernanda Rollo

Maria Fernanda Rollo (born 1965) is a Portuguese university professor specialising in the history of Portugal in the 20th century and in the history of engineering. She served as Secretary of State for Science, Technology and Higher Education in the XXI Government of Portugal between November 26, 2015, and October 17, 2018.

Rollo is a researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History in the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the NOVA University Lisbon. She chaired the Institute between 2013 and 2015, and chaired the "Economy, Society, Heritage and Innovation" group until 2016. She is a corresponding academic of the Portuguese History Academy. In March 2020 she was made a Full Professor at the university. She coordinates the university's PhD programme in History. Her main research areas cover Contemporary Economic and Social History; the History of Engineering; Portugal and European Economic Cooperation; History of Innovation; and the Organization of Science in Portugal. She has made detailed studies of telecommunications in Portugal; of the history of Portuguese emigration; of the economy of the First Portuguese Republic: of the history of the Instituto Camões; and of the history of uranium in Portugal.

Rollo was deputy director and is now an editorial board member of the peer-reviewed Ler História magazine; a member of the Advisory Council of the Programme of Portuguese Language and Culture of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation; a member of the Portuguese Network of Environmental History; and a member of the General Council of the Portuguese Association of Industrial Archaeology (APAI). She is also a member of the International Society for First World War Studies and editor of the section on Portugal in the online International Encyclopedia of the First World War. She also coordinates Memória para todos (Memories for all), which is a science training and research programme that promotes the study, organization and dissemination of the historical, cultural and technological heritage of Portugal, in close relationship with archives, institutions, municipalities, schools and local associations. She was a founding member of the Portuguese Association for the History of International Relations (APHRI), as well as being a member of the Portuguese Association for Economic and Social History. From 2011 to 2015 she was President of the Portuguese Institute of Contemporary History.

On 10 June 2011, Maria Fernanda Rollo was made a Commander of the Order of Prince Henry (Portuguese: Ordem do Infante Dom Henrique), a major Portuguese award. In November 2015 she was appointed as Secretary of State for Science, Technology and Higher Education in the XXI Government of Portugal and served in this role until October 2018.

Between 2008 and 2011, Rollo was an executive member of the National Commission for the Commemoration of the Centenary of the Portuguese Republic and now coordinates Centro República, which is a web portal that aims to preserve and make available the digital, bibliographic and documentary heritage produced and brought together within the framework of the Centenary Commemoration, as well as to promote research and debate around the theme of the First Republic and Republicanism.

Maria Fernanda Fernandes Garcia Rollo was born in what was, at the time, Léopoldville in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1965. She graduated in history in 1987 from the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the NOVA University Lisbon, specialising in the History of Art, and went on to complete a master's degree in 20th Century History from the same university in 1983, with a thesis entitled Portugal and the Marshall Plan. From the rejection of, to the request for American financial aid (1947-1952). Rollo obtained a Doctorate in Contemporary Economic and Social History in 2005, also from the NOVA University.