Isabel Maria de Oliveira Capeloa Gil has been Rector of the Portuguese Catholic University (UCP) since 2016, President of the UCP Foundation, and President of the International Federation of Catholic Universities (IFCU) since 2018. She is a Professor of German Studies and Culture at the Faculty of Human Sciences at UCP.

She is a board member of the European Women Rectors Association (EWORA), and a member of the European Academy. Isabel Gil is also a member of the Advisory Board of Edmond de Rothschild and a member of the Board of Directors of AmCham (Portugal).

She has been a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations since 2017 and was appointed by Pope Francis as a consultant to the Holy See’s Dicastery for Education and Culture in 2022. She has held management and advisory positions in the following bodies: Danish Research Council, Fulbright Commission, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, AVEPRO (Vatican Accreditation Agency), FAPESP (Brazil) and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Germany).

She has received several awards and distinctions, including the Golden Master of the High Directorate of the Carlos III Foundation (Spain), the title of Magnificent Ibero-American Rector, fellowships from The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (Stanford U.), DAAD and Fulbright, among others.

She holds honorary doctorates from Boston College (2019) and the Institut Catholique de Paris (2021). She is the author of more than 140 scientific papers published in English, Portuguese, German, Spanish and French.