Jose Maria holds a Bachelor’s degree in History from Universidad Complutense de Madrid, an MSc in Theory and History of International Relations from The London School of Economics and Political Science and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in History at King’s College London. Jose Maria is a recipient of an LAHP (London Arts and Humanities Partnership) scholarship, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. He also received a British-Spanish Society scholarship in 2021 and a Goodenough College scholarship in 2019. 

Since 2019, Jose Maria has worked on a research project at the London Business School, The Political Economy of African Development, where he analysed the impact of colonial concession companies and post-independence political economy on Angola and Mozambique’s current economic development.

Earlier, Jose Maria worked in international development and education projects in Angola, Egypt and the United States.

Jose Maria is currently working on a co-authored book that will publish handwritten, personal letters from an enslaved person in sixteenth-century Seville, an extremely rare and invaluable example of unmediated enslaved Africans’ voices from the transatlantic slave trade period.