Paula Castro is full professor of Psychology at ISCTE-IUL and integrated researcher at CIS-iscte. She holds a PhD in Social and Environmental Psychology (ISCTE, 2000) and a BA in Psychology (Univ-Lisboa, 1987). He studied the processes of meaning construction, interpretation and communication involved in the reception of new laws and public policies, especially environmental ones, developing a social psychology of legal innovation. In particular, he analysed how new laws governing climate action, biodiversity protection, public participation or urban regeneration are received by the public (e.g. contested, accepted, negotiated) - and the consequences of this reception for social change. These studies, both quantitative and qualitative, usually focus on asymmetric relations between the public and experts/institutions. Other areas of interest are relations between people and places, local knowledge, social memory and history and the foundations of theories of social psychology.
She has coordinated and participated in funded (FCT, EU) and supervised PhD and post-doctoral projects, with work published in high impact international journals in the areas of social, political, environmental and community psychology. She has been Director of the Department of Psychology (2008-2010), Director of the PhD programme in Psychology (2010-2013), Director of the MSc in Environmental and Sustainability Studies (2015-2019), member of the Scientific Council of ISCTE (2010-2014), Scientific Committee of CIS-iscte (2016-19) and Director of CIS-iscte (2019-2021).
https://ciencia.iscte-iul.pt/authors/paula-castro/cv