As a Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, Maria Rita cultivates an engaging and inclusive learning environment that fosters experimentation, critical thinking, and interdisciplinary exploration across modules such as web design, coding, product digital design, immersive design, creativity, and artificial intelligence. She encourages students to reflect on and debate their ideas within a user-centric design approach.
As a Researcher in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Manchester Metropolitan University and at the Institute of Systems and Robotics at the University of Coimbra, her work focuses on practice-based research, pushing the boundaries of interactive art and exploring innovative approaches to creative expression through movement-based interaction. She is deeply committed to integrating movement and gesture with artificial intelligence and machine learning models to evoke new visual and interactive perspectives. Her research also extends into broader domains, including art, culture, e-health, and sport.
Her scientific and artistic contributions have been recognised internationally. In 2025, she was awarded an Advance HE Fellowship (FHEA) in recognition of her attainment against the Professional Standards Framework for teaching and learning support in higher education. In 2023, she received the Best Presentation and Performance Award at the Technarte Conference in Bilbao for her work F O R M S. She has presented her research and artistic practice at events such as the Greater Boston Digital Research & Pedagogy Symposium 2023 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston (USA). In 2022, her interactive installation Move In Tempo received the award for Best Artwork at the Artistic Residences CRIATECH – Digital Exhibition of Creativity & Technology in Aveiro, Portugal.
She has spoken at various conferences and round tables on the relationship between AI and the arts, including as a Guest Speaker at Dona IAIÁ with Adriana Calcanhotto — “How Creativity Is Born: Composition and AI” (2025), at Millisboa — Roundtable “A.I. – The Good, The Bad, and The Villain” (2024), and at the Artificial Intelligence and Art conference organised by APDSI in collaboration with Ciência Viva (2023).
Maria Rita has presented her work in international exhibitions, including her solo exhibition Everything is movement, everything is visual (2025) at the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (Seoul, South Korea) and the solo exhibition Move In Tempo at the UNESCO World Heritage Machado de Castro National Museum (Coimbra, Portugal). She has also participated in group exhibitions such as the Intercontinental Biennial (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Cycle RGB (Ourém, Portugal), and Storytellers + Machines (Manchester, United Kingdom).
These experiences have profoundly shaped Maria Rita’s perspective on human presence and the evolving dialogue between humans and machines, explored through movement, gesture, recognition, and relational dynamics with others and the world.
