University of Porto

Gil Nata (PhD in Political Psychology) is an integrated member of CIIE-UP (Centre for Research and Intervention in Education of University of Porto). He has graduated in Psychology in 2000 and finished his PhD in Political Psychology in 2008. His research interests focus on sociology of education, political and community psychology, the civic and political participation of socially excluded people, and on socioeconomic inequalities. Over the past few years he has been mostly involved on research in social and educational inequalities.

Dr. Joana Cadima is a researcher at the Center of Psychology of the University of Porto. Joana holds Ph.D in Psychology and her research interests include teacher-child interactions and social relationships as contexts for child development in early childhood, child adjustment to school transitions, sociocultural risk and the use of observational methods. She has participated in several research projects on early childhood education, focusing on preschool and primary school quality. She has conducted research involving children from socially disadvantaged communities. Recently, she was awarded with a research grant from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology to study variations in activity setting and peer interactions, and effects of process quality across four European countries aiming at answering the overarching question “How and under what conditions does quality in early education and care matter?”.