Nuno Vila-Santa is a Portuguese historian and a post-doctoral researcher at the ERC project BADEMS – The Cultural History of the Black African Diaspora in Early Modern Spain. He holds a BA (2007), MA (2009) and PhD (2014) from NOVA University of Lisbon, in Early Modern History and Portuguese Expansion. His main studies focus on Portuguese Asia in the second half of the 16th century, and Portuguese and European early modern history in the long 16th century.

His books on D. Luís de Ataíde (2015), viceroy of India, and on Francisco Barreto (2021), governor of India and Mutapa, won prizes in 2015 and 2021. Between 2015 and 2024, he held post-doctoral positions at CHAM and CIUHCT. Due to his participation at the RUTTER – Making the Earth Global project (an ERC Advanced Grant housed at CIUHCT), he has worked with the circulation of Portuguese maritime knowledge to Europe and diplomatic history.

He has also published extensively in English in indexed journals such as Portuguese Studies Review (2016), Journal of Asian History (2017), Lusitania Sacra (2018), Hispania Sacra (2019), Asian Review of World Histories (2020), Historical Research (2021), Anuario de Estudios Americanos (2023), Culture & History Digital Journal (2023), Vegueta (2023), Terrae Incognitae (2023 and 2025), the Antiquaries Journal (2024) and English Historical Review (2025). In 2024, he published Knowledge Exchanges between Portugal and Europe: Maritime Diplomacy, Espionage and Nautical Science in the Early Modern World (15th-17th centuries) at Amsterdam University Press, which won the Admiral Teixeira da Mota 2024 Prize from the Portuguese Navy Academy.

Within the framework of BADEMS project, he is working on the cultural legacy of black and Afro-descendant communities. His work is devoted to digging in archives in Spanish Extremadura and Portugal to uncover the cultural contributions of black and Afro-descendant communities to Early Modern Spain and Portugal.