João Costa was born in 1972, in Lisbon, graduated in Linguistics from the Faculdade de Letras - University of Lisbon, has a PhD in Linguistics, from the University of Leiden, Netherlands. He was a visiting researcher at MIT and is a Chair Professor of Linguistics at the Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas - Nova University of Lisbon. 

Until 2015, João Costa was the Director of the Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas - Nova University of Lisbon as well as President of the Scientific Board of Social Science and Humanities of the Science and Technology Foundation. He was an invited professor in universities in Brazil, Macau, Spain, Netherlands and Italy and is also a part of the Editorial Board of international magazines of linguistic.  

He was Secretary of State in the two previous Constitutional Governments, member of the Scientific Board of the National Reading Plan, the National Committee of the International Portuguese Language Institute and of the Consulting Board of the Camões Insitute and President of the Portuguese Association of Linguistic. He is, currently, the Minister of Education of Portugal.