Research interests

• History of medicine and natural history (16th to 18th century);
• Historiography;
• History of the book;
• Science and gender;
• Science and the visual arts.

Projects

• "The view of nature in the medico-philosophical tought at the transition from the XVIIth to the XVIIIth century", (PTDC/FIL-FCI/116843/2010).
• "Philosophy, Medicine and Society", (PTDC/FIL/64863/2006), 2007-present.
• "History of the Visual Culture of Portuguese Medicine", (PTDC/HC/0110/2009), 2009-present.

• "The Image in Science and Art", (PTDC/EAT/64201/2006), 2007- present.

Publications (selection)

1. Palmira Fontes da Costa, "Geographical Expansion and the Reconfiguration of Medical Authority: Garcia de Orta's Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India (1563)", Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 43 (2012): 74-81.
2. Palmira Fontes da Costa, Adelino Cardoso (eds.), Percursos na História do Livro Médico, 1450-1800 (Lisboa: Colibri, 2011).
3. Palmira Fontes da Costa, The Singular and the Making of Knowledge at the Royal Society of London in the Eighteenth Century (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).
4. Palmira Fontes da Costa, "Secrecy, Ostentation and the Illustration of Exotic Animals in Sixteenth-Century Portugal", Annales of Science, 66 (2009), 59-83.
5. Palmira Fontes da Costa, “Women and the Popularisation of Botany in Early Nineteenth-Century Portugal: The Marquesa de Alorna´s Botanical Recreations”, in Faidra Papanelopoulou, Agustí Nieto-Galan and Enrique Perdiguero (eds.), Popularisation of Science and Technology in the European Periphery (London: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 43-63.
6. Palmira Fontes da Costa, Henrique Leitão, “Portuguese Imperial Science: A Historiographical Review.”, in Daniela Bleichmar, Paula De Vos, Kristin Huffine (eds.), Science, Power and the Order of Nature in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), pp. 35-53.
7. Palmira Fontes da Costa, O Corpo Insólito: Dissertações sobre Monstros no Portugal do século XVIII, (Porto: Porto Editora, 2005).
8. Palmira Fontes da Costa, “The Medical Understanding of Monstrous Births at the Royal Society of London during the first half of the Eighteenth Century”, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 26 (2004), 159-177.
9. Palmira Fontes da Costa, “Mediating Sexual Difference: The Medical Understanding of Human Hermaphrodites in Eighteenth-Century England”, in Willem de Blécourt and Cornelie Usborne (eds.), Cultural Approaches to the History of Medicine. Mediating Medicine in Early Modern and Modern Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 127-147.
10. Palmira Fontes da Costa, “The Culture of Curiosity at the Royal Society during the first half of the Eighteenth Century”, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 56 (2002), 147-166.

Scientific Societies and other institutions

• Sociedade Brasileira de Filosofia e História da Biologia: Founding Member.