In his professional career, Mela Dávila Freire combines the performance of institutional responsibilities with research around art archives, artist's publications, and bibliographic and documentary collections related to contemporary art. She holds a degree in Anglo-Germanic Philology from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and a degree in Publishing from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. 

As an independent consultant and researcher, she has collaborated with the Documenta Archive (Kassel), the Lafuente Archive (Santander), Arts Libris (Barcelona), the Cervantes Institute and other public and private entities and collections. She has also curated various cycles of activities and exhibitions; among these, the most recent one is Legible - Visible. Between the Film Frame and the Page, which was presented in Barcelona in the spring of 2017 and at the XIV Cuenca Biennial (Ecuador) in the Fall of 2018.

Mela Dávila Freire has also played different roles as a staff member in contemporary art museums. Among others, she was responsible for the Dept. of Publications and, later, the first director of the Study Center at the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA); and recently, she has been Director of Public Activities at Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid.