Joana is a writer and political commentator born in Lisbon in 1988. Due to a bizarre set of events she happens to be bilingual in Portuguese and German. While her work is mostly in English, she can also speak French and Spanish.

Joana moved to London in 2006, graduated in Advertising three years later, and worked in fashion PR & communications for a bit, writing for magazines such as WWD.

By February 2010 she became one of the founders of the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, as well as its Chief Press Officer – a job she held until after the collapse of the student movement. Around the same time she started writing for a series of blogs and publications.

In the summer of 2010 she visited Palestine, from where she wrote about the plight of people living in internal refugee camps and the effects of the Apartheid Wall.

In February 2011 she travelled to Cairo to cover the occupation of Tahrir Square. She returned to Cairo after the fall of President Mubarak which allowed her to report on the wake of the “Arab Spring”. In 2021, she wrote, produced and presented a documentary on the 10th anniversary of the Egyptian Revolution.

Back in Britain, Joana was the first reporter to cover the fight of Focus E15, a group of London single mothers campaigning to be rehoused, after being evicted from a hostel by Newham Council in 2014. She has reported from a series of mass demonstrations, occupations, deportations and strikes, focusing on the effects of austerity policies in British society.

Joana’s foreign coverage also includes reporting from the Greek elections in January 2015, the Brazilian elections in 2022, and a series of pieces on Portuguese social, economic and political matters.

As a political commentator, Joana has been featured on Channel 4 News, BBC and LBC radio, as well as debates against fellow pundits Peter Oborne, Michael White and Peter Hitchens. Her work can also be found in The Guardian, the Associated Press, Al Jazeera, Voice of America, and various other outlets across the globe.

She holds an MSc in Middle East Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.

Joana is currently the Communications Director of the think-do-tank The Democracy Collaborative.

She lives in south London with her family.