Bio notes

Carla Santiago
Award-winning industrial designer. Her work combines family heritage and innovation. Trained at the European Institute of Design at CENCAL and CEARTE, she understands the industrial and craft process in her practice, bringing an artistic and exclusive look to training in the sector.

Catarina Medeiros
Psychologist, graduated from the University of Coimbra. Passionate about change and social impact, she coordinates the Social Support and Employability area at RESHAPE. Focused on breaking down stigmas and creating opportunities, she believes in the power of sharing and collaborative work to drive systems’ transformation.

Chiara Pussetti
PhD in Cultural Anthropology, University of Turin, Italy, 2003. Assistant Researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, lecturer in the PhD programme at the same University and president of the EBANO artistic collective (ebanocollective.org). She has carried out research and published extensively in the areas of anthropology of the body, gender and emotions, medical anthropology and migration. She is the author of: Poética das Emoções. Os Bijagó da Guiné-Bissau (Laterza 2005) and Be Fu**ing Perfect. The Pursuit of Perfection from Diet to Plastic Surgery (Etnográfica Press 2024); and editor of several volumes, including, in recent years: Exercícios de Antropologia Narrativa (Colibrí 2023); Remaking the Human (Berghahn 2021); Biotecnologias, Transformações Corporais e Subjetivas (UFRGS 2021); Super-humanos (Colibrí 2021).

Gabriela do Amaral
Born in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is a Poet, Designer and a Master in Literary, Cultural and Interart Studies from the University of Porto. She has lived in Portugal since 2017 and currently resides in the city of Braga. She is the author of Acidentes Tropicais (Quelônio, São Paulo, 2019 and Exclamação, Porto, 2022), Cloro (Flan de Tal, Vila do Conde, 2019), Língua-mãe (Fresca, Porto, 2021) and Pequenas Erupções (Ed. 7letras, Rio de Janeiro, 2022). In all her projects, she is integrally involved with the content and visual part of the work. Word and form go hand in hand. As well as writing her poetry books, she has also done the graphics for most of them.

Gabriela Fonseca
Gabriela Fonseca holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology, Family Psychology and Family Intervention from the University of Coimbra and the University of Lisbon. She has a postgraduate degree in Family Therapy and Systemic Intervention from the Vasco Navarra School of Family Therapy and the University of Coimbra, and a master's degree in Clinical Psychology (Systemic, Health and Family) from the same university. She is an Assistant Professor at the Miguel Torga Higher Institute (ISMT) in Coimbra and at the Lusófona University in Porto, teaching in the areas of systemic intervention and scientific research methodologies. She has (co)authored scientific articles in international journals on her research themes, particularly family adaptation and resilience in contexts of macroeconomic adversity, families with emerging adult children, and the transition to adulthood. She has also collaborated on international research projects focused on the financial well-being of emerging adults.
She is a family and couple therapist, trained by the Portuguese Society of Family Therapy. She currently works in the ISMT Systemic Intervention Office.

José Daniel Vilhena
Degree and Master's in Environmental Engineering. MBA for executives. He works for the Municipality of Coimbra, where he has been Head of the Green Spaces and Parks Division since 2012.
In 2018, he discovered that his daughter Margarida had Tay Sachs disease, after two years of symptoms and inconclusive diagnoses. In 2019, together with his wife Inês Prazeres, and other families whose children had Tay Sachs, Sandhoff and GM1, he founded DOCE - National Association, of which he is Chairman of the Board.

José Machado
Graduated in European Studies from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra. Master's student in Public-Private Administration at the Faculty of Law of the same university. Coordinator of European Policy at the Board of the Coimbra Academic Association. Association leader, with an interest in analysing the implementation of public policies and reflecting on international politics and diplomacy, having taken on the European Policy portfolio in the DG-AAC.

Leonor Silva
Graduated in Sociology with a Minor in International Relations from the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra. Master's student in Sociology at the same Faculty (18/20). During her degree, she completed a curricular internship at UAlg, conducting statistical studies on the profile of applicants for the DGES grant and an analysis of student residence satisfaction. Recently, she completed an internship at the CES Citizen Science Group, participating in the evaluation of social benefits and the co-creation of interventions in the public space with children in Coimbra. She has worked with vulnerable groups and is an activist in Coimbra's student political scene.

Marco Henriques
He is an enthusiast for fairer, more inclusive and sustainable societies. He works as the Executive Director of RESHAPE and is a lecturer in higher and university education in the field of law and social inclusion.

Mattia Faustini
Junior researcher at the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra, where he is involved in the ‘PSYGLOCAL’ research project on psychological suffering, human rights and psychiatric deinstitutionalisation, funded by the FCT. He is a PhD candidate in the interdisciplinary programme “Discourses: Culture, History and Society”. His research interests include social politics and poetics, arts-based methodologies and the history of the literary avant-garde.

Pedro Nogueira
Landscape architect. His professional career includes collaboration with the National Culture Centre and the Serralves Foundation on projects to disseminate and promote scientific literacy. He is currently a collaborator with the Terra Sintrópica Association, coordinator of the Agroecology and Regeneration Centre for the Semi-Arid, and project manager of the CCDESERT pilot areas for testing regenerative solutions in Mediterranean semi-arid forests.

Susana de Noronha
Associate Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra and Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology of the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Minho. Founding member of AIDA - Social Sciences Research Network on Artificial Intelligence, Data, and Algorithms. Member of the Editorial Board of the CES Collection (Books/Monographs), published by the University of Coimbra Press. As an Anthropologist with a PhD in Sociology, she currently works at the intersection of Anthropology/Sociology of Art and Material/Visual Culture and Science and Technology Studies. She is also the author of 52 published scientific illustrations, coining a new methodology - creative ethnographic drawing, reinventing this practice with the use of metaphor and imagination.