João Titternigton Gomes Cravinho was born in Lisbon in June 1964.

He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Oxford and a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics. João Gomes Cravinho was the European Union Ambassador to Brazil since August 2015, having held the same position in India between 2011 and 2015.

Between March 2005 and June 2011, João Gomes Cravinho was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, in the XVII and XVIII Constitutional Governments.

Previously, he was Lecturer in International Relations at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra, and a Guest Lecturer at ISCTE and at the Faculty of Law of Nova University of Lisbon.

He has served as a research associate at the National Defence Institute, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the European Commission and the World Bank. Between 2001 and 2002 he presided over the Portuguese Institute for Development Assistance.

He completed the Leadership for Senior Executives course at the Harvard Business School.

He was rapporteur for the Judicial Sector, World Bank Mission in East Timor, 1999. In the same year, he was the coordinator and member of an international observer mission to the popular consultation in Timor-Leste.

Author of the book Visions of the World: the discipline of International Relations and the

contemporary world (2002), João Gomes Cravinho has published numerous articles in specialized academic journals and in newspapers on topics related to defence policy, cooperation and international politics.

He was appointed as Minister of Defence of Portugal’s XXI Gouvernment on October 15th, 2018, and retained in the same post after alections for the XXII Gouvernment in November 2019.