Some colleagues leave us because they retire, others because they leave for other schools, others because they leave us forever. It is always with great sadness and difficulty that I inform the school and its community of the departure of a colleague who is still active and whom we felt was far from the natural time to leave us. Unfortunately, I am here to inform you that our colleague Prof. Margarida Duarte has passed away.
I met Margarida Duarte when she was still an assistant like me, at the beginning of her teaching career at the university with only a degree (which she completed in 1986). I shared with her, for a few years, the same office (of the assistants and trainees) that the School provided for us and so I had the opportunity to "grow" academically, for a few years, at her side. After a short period of time in which we were both colleagues teaching Marketing, our destinies diverged. I went into Finance and she progressed into Marketing. And it was in this scientific area that she developed and excelled throughout her later teaching and scientific career.
Later, in the second half of the 1990s, we met again at Manchester Business School, where I was returning as a post-doctoral fellow, and she was pursuing her doctoral studies, which she successfully completed in 2000.
Returning to Portugal, Prof. Margarida Duarte devoted herself to teaching various curricular units at the undergraduate, masters, and doctoral levels.
She also published several scientific articles in the area of marketing, and at ISEG she coordinated both the post-graduate course in Marketing and the Master in Marketing. It was during my first mandate as President of ISEG that I had the pleasure to appoint her as President of the Management Department, at the head of which she did an important job serving her colleagues and the School.
A life of great dedication to the guidance of dozens of students in the Masters in Marketing also stands out. She was coordinator of the scientific area of Marketing, member of the Scientific Council and the School Council.
Life was not easy for Prof. Margarida Duarte. At a very young age, polio caught her mercilessly and from that attack she never fully recovered, having left marks that made her different in her locomotion. But if this could be a handicapShe always rejected him, leaving us the example of how sometimes our complaints about the difficulties and limitations that hinder us are in vain. And it was from her that I learned the difficulty of being different in Portugal. That is why I thank her for those life lessons that, without knowing it, she was giving us, day by day, when she shared with us the moments of work and friendship, allowing us to enjoy her generous smile.
Recently, when illness struck her again, Prof. Margarida Duarte was again of a total discretion, preferring the reserve, and fighting until the end with admirable firmness and abnegation, managing to maintain the teaching service until almost the last days of her life.
Her colleagues and the School are proud to have had her as one of us and her students will always remember her with the best of memories.
The teacher Margarida Duarte passed away last December 7. On Saturday, the 10th, the coffin will be in the mortuary chapel of the church of S. João de Deus from 6 pm until 10 pm. On Sunday the 11th, at 12.30pm and still at the chapel of the church of S. João de Deus, the priest will give the priest's commendation, and then at 1pm it will continue to the Olivais cemetery where cremation will take place.
May he rest in peace.
João Duque
The Dean of ISEG
