Virgínia de Bivar Robertes Rau (4/9 December 1907 – 2 November 1973) was a Portuguese archaeologist and historian. She was an expert on Portuguese and Portuguese colonial history and author of many history books.
She was the daughter of Luís Rau, Jr. (1865–1943) of German descent, and his wife Matilde de Bivar de Paula Robertes (1879–1961) of Spanish descent, who married in Lisbon in 1902. She enrolled in the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon in 1927, but the following year went aboard, where she attended several courses including at the University of Toulouse. In 1939, due to the beginning of the Second World War, she returned to Lisbon, where she joined the Historical and Philosophical Sciences of the Faculty of Arts. A member of the Academia Portuguesa da História, Rau published a vast collection of works on Portuguese and colonial medieval and modern history. On 2 July 1969 she was awarded the rank of Grand Officer of the Order of Public Instruction. Portuguese Studies Review cites her as a pioneer of the historiographical research of Timor governor António Coelho Guerreiro [de], after a work she published in 1956. She has also commented on the economic history of Brazil and Angola.
References
- Grande enciclopédia portuguesa e brasileira: actualização (in Portuguese). Editorial Enciclopédia. 1987.
- GARCIA, José Manuel. RAU, Virgínia. Estudos Sobre a História do Sal Português (in Portuguese). Lisboa : Editorial Presença, 1984.
- Portuguese Studies Review, Vol. 12, No. 2. Baywolf Press. 22 February 2005. p. 38. GGKEY:7BRBGWRYNQ1.
- Richardson, David; Silva, Filipa Ribeiro da (28 November 2014). Networks and Trans-Cultural Exchange: Slave Trading in the South Atlantic, 1590–1867. BRILL. p. 124. ISBN 978-90-04-28058-8.
  | This biographical article about a Portuguese historian is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it. |
 | This biographical article about an archaeologist is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it. |
- Portuguese archaeologists
- Portuguese women archaeologists
- 20th-century Portuguese historians
- Portuguese women historians
- 20th-century archaeologists
- University of Lisbon alumni
- Portuguese people of German descent
- Portuguese people of Spanish descent
- 1907 births
- 1973 deaths
- 20th-century Portuguese women writers
- Portuguese writer stubs
- European historian stubs
- Portuguese history stubs
- Archaeologist stubs