In the history of the Discoveries, Damião Peres made an effort to elucidate some issues which from an erudite point of view had not been resolved, for example, the date of the discovery of the Azores, the voyages of Diogo Cão and Bartolomeu Dias, and the major failures of Vasco da Gama, Pedro Álvares Cabral and Ferdinand Magellan. He dedicated to these some extremely astute analytical studies with the purpose of clarifying once and for all complex problems of documental interpretation. He was successful in this careful and extremely cautious investigation, which he fine-tuned to enable the students who followed his infrequent courses to understand. In his writings his concern with gathering exhaustive information about each of the problems he dealt with is very noticeable. No chronicle, travel account, map or piece of indirect information remained unanalysed, neither did any reference to authors who had touched on the subjects in question, whether they agreed or disagreed with his theories. All this made the História dos Descobrimentos Portugueses a weighty tome, with no major discussion of any problematical issues and requiring a somewhat fastidious reading. This was totally unlike his classes where his extemporisation (well prepared, certainly) was always brilliant and stimulating. This was how he was continually improving his writings, which he always counted on re-editing.

And so it was with the Discoveries, but he also dealt with other difficult moments in the life of Portugal such as the birth of the State from the Condado Portucalense in 1140, the 1383-1385 crisis and the collapse of 1580 (by dint of the corruption of the ruling groups and Castilian arms). All were complex situations and structural turning points which he elaborated on at length despite focussing strictly on events and not forcing himself to go much beyond the descriptive even when he studied the Republic in the Suplemento à História de Portugal (Supplement to the History of Portugal, 1954). He maintained, however, a relative neutrality which was not common at the time.

A conservative republican (accommodating to the Estado Novo), he served in posts and on numerous missions that were allocated to him. He was Director of the General Library of the University of Coimbra (1940-1943) and General Secretary of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences and of the Portuguese Academy of History. He won several distinctions such as being awarded degrees Honoris Causa by the University of Montpellier and the University of Bordeaux, and he was elected a correspondent member of the Madrid Academy of History and the Brazilian Historical and Geographical Institute of Rio de Janeiro, among other distinctions. He was able to use his talent as an excellent mass communicator on the radio: his lectures on the History of Portugal had many listeners and merited publication (and re-printing): História de Portugal: palestras na Emissora Nacional (History of Portugal: lectures on the National Radio Station, 1951-1952 and 1960).

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