Mónica Canário was born in Oeiras in 1993. She holds a degree in Political Science from ISCTE-IUL (2014), having attended the Freie Universität Berlin (Germany) during Erasmus mobility, and a Master degree in International Studies (Middle East and North Africa specialization) from the same institution, with a dissertation on "The impact of the Arab Spring on the social and political status of women in Tunisia" (2016). She also has three specializations by ISCTE-IUL: Refugees, Human Rights and Reception (2016), The Idea of Europe (2017) and The Middle East in World Politics (2017). She was the national coordinator for HeForShe Portugal between 2016 and 2019 and a member for Bringing Europeans Together Association Portugal between 2018 and 2019. Currently, she is a research assistant at the Center for International Studies (CEI-IUL) and is attending a PhD in Political Science (International Relations specialization) where she is developing her thesis "Europeanization as a tool for women’s empowerment within the European Neighbourhood Policy: The cases of Morocco and Tunisia in the context of the cooperation between the European Union and the Council of Europe", supervised by Dr. Giulia Daniele (CEI-IUL) and Dr. Inês Marques Ribeiro (ISCTE-IUL, CEI-IUL).