Maria Irene Ramalho is a professor emerita of American Studies and Feminist Studies at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Coimbra, Portugal as well as a former Assistant Professor International in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. In 2008, she was the first non-American to be awarded the Mary C. Turpie Prize by the American Studies Association (ASA) for outstanding abilities and achievement in American studies teaching, advising, and program development, and in 2018, she received the Medal of Scientific Merit, awarded by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of Portugal.