Isabel Capeloa Gil is the first woman to be appointed president of the International Federation of Catholic Universities and a member of the Advisory Board of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

Isabel Capeloa Gil is the only Portuguese woman on the Forbes 50 over 50 list.

One of the most venerable women in international Catholic higher education, Capeola Gil is the first woman to be appointed president of the International Federation of Catholic Universities (IFCU) and the sixth rector of the Portuguese Catholic University.

Capeloa Gil grew up in China and her upbringing sparked an early interest in researching issues of diversity and conflict in her academic work. As rector of CUP, she oversees expansion projects for the university; as president of IFCU, the oldest association of Catholic universities in the world, she led a working group for greater representation of women in academic leadership positions.

Isabel Maria de Oliveira Capeloa Gil (Mira, 22 July 1965) is a Portuguese academic. She is the 6th Rector of the Portuguese Catholic University, appointed by the Congregation for Catholic Education on 26 September 2016, at the proposal of the institution's Chancellor, Manuel Clemente, 17th Patriarch of Lisbon. She took office on 28 October 2016 and has been President of the International Federation of Catholic Universities (FIUC) since 2018.

Full Professor of Cultural Studies at the Faculty of Human Sciences of the Portuguese Catholic University of Lisbon, she graduated in Modern Languages and Literatures from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon and holds a Master's degree in German Studies from the same institutions. She studied at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Bavaria, and at the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois, and obtained her PhD in German Studies at the Faculty of Human Sciences of the Portuguese Catholic University of Lisbon, where she was Director between 2005 and 2012, having contributed to the development of a smart specialisation strategy for the unit, especially in the areas of Communication and Culture, and to broadening the relationship with the business world in these sectors.

With more than 150 published works, his research has contributed to defining the field of Cultural Studies. In university management, she has excelled in developing the University's internationalisation and research strategy, of which she was Vice-Rector between 2012 and 2016 and responsible for Research and Internationalisation.

Between 2014 and 2015, she created and coordinated the network of collaboration between the University and the cultural sector, including the Master's in Cultural Studies at the Faculty of Human Sciences of the Portuguese Catholic University, considered to be the third best Master's in Arts Management in the world.

She belongs to and has held management positions in various national and international scientific associations, including ICLA (International Comparative Literature Association) and ICA (International Communication Association). She has been a Visiting Professor at various universities, including the University of Munich, Ca'Foscari University in Venice, the Houston School of Film at the National University of Ireland, the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and the University of São José in Macau. She was a Visiting Researcher at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Since 2010 she has been an Honorary Fellow at the School of Advanced Studies at the University of London. He co-ordinated the Research Leadership Forum of the Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils (GFCC).

He is also a member of the European Council of Foreign Relations, the Advisory Board of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Chairman of the Board of the UCP Foundation.