Ana Cristina Torres is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Research and Intervention in Education (CIIE) of the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences of the University of Porto (UPORTO). She graduated with a 5-year bachelor's degree in Biology and Geology Teaching from the Faculty of Sciences of UPorto (2003) and then worked as a teacher in schools. In 2006, Ana Cristina was awarded a PhD studentship from the Portuguese research funding agency (FCT) to attend the PhD Programme in Didactics and Training, specialised in Science Education, from the University of Aveiro and concluded in 2012. She joined CIIE, as her host institution, in 2013 to work as a Research Assistant in CIIE's Observatory of Life in Schools. In 2015, she was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship, in a highly competitive bid from the FCT, to work on students transitions and their voices on the curriculum in schools, both in Portugal and Scotland, with the supervision of Professor Mark Priestley, from the University of Stirling, and of Professor Helena Araújo and Professor Ana Mouraz, from CIIE. In 2018, she was appointed at CIIE for a research position under a 6-year full-time fixed-term contract, funded by the Portuguese research funding agency (FCT), to advance her research and career goals. At CIIE, she is involved in the research community of practice IDEAFor - Identity, Democracy, School, Administration and Training-, a CIIE's research and advanced training group. Since 2020, she has been co-coordinating one of the nine strategic areas of CIIE: 9. 'Pedagogical Management and Democratic Participation'. She developed her leadership skills by co-coordinating the Portuguese team of eSGarden, a KA2 Erasmus+ project (2019-2022) led by the Universist Politecnica de Valencia, Spain (UPV) and the national ClimActiC project (2021-2023), an ERDF R&D regional funded interdisciplinary consortium on climate change mitigation and awareness. She actively collaborated on writing the applications for funding for these two projects. She is also co-leading the national team of the KA3 Erasmus+ project COSI.ed ('Co-created Education through Social Inclusion') led by the University of South-Eastern Norway (USN), Norway, and the team from the national FCT-funded project WAY ('promoting student self-regulated learning in the classroom through peer observation: quantitative study') led by Universidade Aberta in Portugal. She has been participating in national and international collaborative-funded research as a team member (e.g. ReKINDLE+50), on issues such as Curriculum, Pedagogy, Teacher professional development and Education for Sustainability. Her current research interests include curriculum studies on student voice and participation, teachers' professional development and curriculum and pedagogy innovation, particularly in science education, sustainability and environmental education. During her pathways at U.Aveiro and U.Porto, she has been teaching courses in "Education, Environment and Sustainability", "Psychosociology of Educational Institutions", "Didactics of the Study of the Environment", and "Science Education Teaching" in BA and MA courses. She has also been developing outreach, teachers' professional development work and consultancy work for schools in disadvantaged territories. Since 2020, she has been acting as a school's external evaluator to the Portuguese General Inspectorate of Education. Currently, she is co-supervising a PhD candidate, with a thesis in environmental education, and two MA students. She has published 19 journal articles and 5 book chapters both nationally and internationally and is currently working on further dissemination of her postdoctoral research and current projects' results. Ana Cristina is also a regular contributor to national and international conferences, such as ECER.