Maria Augusta is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Land Economy and Fellow of the Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance (C-EENRG). She is part of the project called BRIDGE (Building Resilience In a Dynamic Global Economy), directed by Professor Jorge Viñuales, a UK-Brazil collaboration funded by the Newton Funds/ESRC. As a Research Associate at the BRIDGE Project, Maria Augusta is contributing at the multidisciplinary study about improving governance of the Brazilian Water-Energy-Food Nexus in the context of the climate change strategies.

Maria Augusta obtained a PhD in international law from the University of São Paulo, where she submitted her thesis on international law of the sea and the qualification of oil platforms, a work that was subsequently published as a book in Brazil. Whilst working on her PhD, she was awarded The British Council Chevening Scholarship to complete a LL.M. course in maritime law at the University of Southampton. Prior to joining the University of Cambridge, she was a Visiting Fellow (international law of the sea) at Queen Mary, University of London, where she has also been invited to be a guest speaker on the International Environmental Law course at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
Maria Augusta is a Brazilian qualified lawyer and she practiced as an advocate for a decade in a leading and renowned law firm in São Paulo, where she gained in depth experience in dispute resolution, primarily in the areas of energy and general commercial law.

Her main research areas are public international law, international law of the sea, international environmental law and energy law.