Paula completed the Integrated Master’s Degree in Psychology at University of Minho and a PhD in Psychology at University College London (UCL) in 2016. Her PhD focused on attachment disorders in institutionalised children, aiming to understand the contribution of caregiving quality and the neural processing of socioemotional stimuli using EEG.

For the following eight years, she worked at UCL and the Anna Freud centre in London, until returning to Portugal to join ProChild CoLAB. She was mainly involved in applied research projects, particularly in the adaptation, evaluation, and implementation of intervention programs for children and young people in care. These included parenting programs for foster families of children with attachment difficulties, programs for parents involved with child protection services, and trauma-focused cognitive-behavioural therapies for children and young people with PTSD. She was also responsible for managing the Developmental Neuroscience lab at Anna Freud, the Child Trauma and Recovery lab at UCL, as well as more recently leading her own team at Anna Freud.

In addition to research, she was involved in teaching. She was module leader of three modules in the field of applied developmental neuroscience in a master´s program, and delivered the attachment and parenting lectures in two other master’s programs, all at UCL. Finally, she did some clinical work at Anna Freud and the Tavistock Clinic with adoptive parents, foster families, and social workers.