PhD in Social Communication, by the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium), in 1983, Aníbal Alves is a Emeritus Professor of the University of Minho. He is one of the pionners of the Communication Sciences Graduation Degree in this institution, as well as in other universities in Portugal.

As a researcher, Aníbal Alves studies the general framework of the Communication Sciences degrees in Portugal, exploring also particular dimensions of theoretical and empirical issues related to the communicative processes in personal and social terms. As an author, he published Press régionale et Émigration – Analyse sémiotique du discours sur les émigrants dans les journaux de Braga (1984) and Licenciaturas da Universidade do Minho (1989). He is a former Director of the Communication Sciences Department, President of the Social Sciences Institute and Vice-Dean of the University of Minho.