Gilberto Fernandes is an academic historian, curator, community archivist, and documentary filmmaker based in Toronto, Canada. His research and scholarly work focus primarily on the Portuguese diaspora, migration, ethnicity, and race in North America, among other interdisciplinary topics.

He is the author of Militants, Mobsters and Mavericks: The Men Who Built Modern Toronto in the 1960s-70s (Lorimer, 2025) and This Pilgrim Nation: The Making of the Portuguese Diaspora in North America (University of Toronto Press, 2019), as well as numerous academic articles published in specialized journals.

He is the co-founder and director of several historical research and outreach projects, including the Portuguese Canadian History Project; City Builders: A History of Immigrant Construction Workers in Postwar Toronto, which won the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario’s Award for Excellence in Conservation (2019); Movimento Perpétuo: The Portuguese Diaspora in Canada; and Laborem Ex Machina: A History of Heavy Construction Machinery and Operating Engineers in Canada.

He currently serves as a contract lecturer in the Department of History at York University in Toronto.

Gilberto Fernandes has been Portugal’s World Advisor since October 2025.