Daniela Portella Sampaio

Daniela Portella Sampaio is a Brazilian-British political scientist specialising in Latin American geopolitics, international security, maritime and Antarctic affairs, and international governance. Her research examines how geopolitical competition, institutional arrangements and domestic priorities shape states’ foreign and security policies, with particular interests in Brazil and the Southern Cone, the South Atlantic, strategic resources, maritime governance and Latin America’s relations with external powers.

Daniela has more than ten years of international research and policy experience across the UK, Germany and Brazil. She has held two Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships and research positions at the University of Leeds, Bielefeld University and the Alfred Wegener Institute/HIFMB, and has served as an adviser to the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat’s Institutional and Legal Working Group since 2015. Her policy engagement includes giving oral evidence to the UK Parliament, contributing to strategic-foresight discussions with the UK Ministry of Defence, and working extensively with diplomats and policymakers through the Antarctic Treaty system. She is co-author of Worldviews of Ice (Springer, 2026) and has a monograph on Antarctic governance under contract with Routledge.