I am a proud alumni of Wageningen University, Erasmus Rotterdam University, Groningen University, Ghent University and Instituto Superior de Agronomia – Universidade de Lisboa. My career as an Economics & Management post-doc researcher at the Aarhus Business School and Universidade de Évora, and later on as an Assistant, Principal and Senior Researcher at CATÓLICA-LISBON consolidated my skills and expertise in applying social science knowledge to the study of food consumption behaviour.

I am the head of the Food Behaviour Lab, a research group I founded at CATÓLICA-LISBON in 2019 to generate knowledge about domestic food practices and their effects on consumer behaviour. Our ultimate goal is to apply this knowledge in the development of community-based interventions and public policies that effectively promote healthy and sustainable diets.

My research interests focus on how people plan, purchase, prepare and eat their meals, and how this affects their food choices and dietary patterns. Together with the Food Behaviour Lab team and colleagues from other labs, I recently identified the demographic, socioeconomic and motivational drivers of meal consumption in Portugal. Moreover, we demonstrated that there are significant associations between consumers’ meal choices and their broader food practices, diet quality and nutritional status.

Before creating the Food Behaviour Lab, I investigated what motivates people to prepare meals at home – including the feelings, emotions and experiences associated with cooking –, and how this affects their opinions about away-from-home meals. Results led to the conceptualization and validation of a new psychometric scale assessing the strength of personal norms regarding meal preparation. Later studies showed how persuasive communication can activate these norms to promote home cooking and healthy eating among young adults.

Meanwhile, I started a new line of research on the perception and acceptance of new food products in collaboration with Sensory Analysis and Ingestive Behaviour experts. Besides contributing to improve the sensory profile of the products studied, our work identified the cognitive, affective and biological factors that influence their acceptance, highlighting how these interact with the sensory characteristics of foods to determine consumer preferences.

Seeking to help accelerate the adoption of healthier and more sustainable diets by European consumers, my current work at the Food Behaviour Lab focuses on applying these findings to the development and implementation of behaviour change interventions that promote home cooking and reduce meat consumption.

I am also actively involved in education at CATÓLICA-LISBON, where I teach Marketing and Consumer Behaviour and supervise the research activities of PhD and MSc students.

My superpower: I understand consumers and their food choices