Maria José Brites is an Associate Professor with Habilitation at Lusófona University, Vice-President of the Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies (CICANT - DOI 10.54499/UIDB/05260/2020), coordinator of MeLCi Lab - Media Literacy and Civic Cultures Lab, vice-coordinator of the Publics and Audiences section of the Portuguese Association for Communication (SOPCOM), and Vice-chair of the Audience and Reception Studies Section - ARS (ECREA). She is also the Principal Investigator of the research project Youth, News and Digital Citizenship - YouNDigital (PTDC/COM-OUT/0243/2021). She is the coordinator of the Master's Degree in Media and Information Literacy and Digital Citizenship at Lusófona University. She was the PI of the project Social Media Resilience Toolkit - SMaRT-EU (co-financed by European Commission/LC-01563446) and Dici-Educa - Educational centres with digital and civic skills (co-financed by Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian/Academias do Conhecimento and Directorate-General for Reintegration and Prison Services) and Portuguese coordinator of the European Media In Action (MIA) project (LC-00644630; http://mediainaction.eu) and the RadioActive Europe project (531245-LLP-1-2012-1-UK-KA3-KA3; http://radioactive101.eu). In MIA coordinated a certified 50-hour training workshop for teachers (Media Education and Citizenship: How to Enhance the Use of Digital in Schools), which has so far been released in four editions. Highlights of RadioActive Europe (2013-14) include the creation of a legal online radio (RadioActive101), the coordination of workshops with young people and social workers, over 30 radio shows created by young participants (12-21 years old), and over 15 publications. While the Portuguese coordinator of RadioActive Europe, she was awarded the prize for Inclusion and Digital Citizenship for the good practices and implementation of the project. Maria José Brites was distinguished with the Research Prize (2017, 2020, 2023) and the Gold Medal of Academic Value (2019) by Lusófona University. Her research interests include youth, journalism and participation; audience and reception studies and news and civic literacy, participatory methodologies, civic cultures, and media resistance. She has widely researched, coordinated and published in these fields of study, including six edited books, seven special issues, over 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals (e.g. International Journal of Communication, Journal of Youth Studies, Media, Culture & Society, Cultura y Educación/Culture and Education, International Journal of Inclusive Education, Participations: International Journal of Audience Research, Medijske studije/Media Studies, JOCAM, and Children & Society), and over 30 book chapters (e.g. Routledge, Springer, Palgrave), among other publications. She has worked as a journalist in Portugal (press card 3182). She is a certified trainer by the Ministry of Education, the Union of Portuguese Journalists, and the National Scientific-Pedagogical Council of Continuous Education, which supervises the training of teachers in Portugal. She has coordinated and delivered over 20 training courses and workshops on journalism, media education, digital citizenship and participation, and media practices, successfully training teachers and other educators, young people and journalists. Main research areas: Youth, journalism and media, Audience studies, Critical literacies, Digital citizenship, Participatory research, Media and ageing studies.