Miguel Basto-Pereira

Miguel Basto-Pereira, Ph.D., is the Founder and Co-Director of the Master’s in Forensic Psychology. His research focuses on the sequences of familial and psychosocial risk factors promoting early justice involvement and criminal persistence. He has extensively published in high-impact journals in the areas of criminal psychology and developmental criminology. Dr. Basto Pereira is also the founder of the International Study of Pro/Antisocial Behaviour in Young Adults, a cross-national research initiative conducted in 10 countries across five continents, with the aim to explore the intercultural universality of risk/protective factors leading to criminal behaviour and psychosocial problems in young adults. In 2023, he received the Outstanding Early Career Psychologist Award from the American Psychology Association – Division 52.
He is currently the Principal Investigator of the ChainPrevent project (Ref: 2022.03898.PTDC), a funded research initiative that utilises the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development dataset to map the temporal sequences of multisystemic factors underlying the development and persistence of antisocial behaviour. This work may pave the way for the development of more effective Tailored Crime Prevention Strategies. Lastly, building upon his previous research, his team is now developing a translational research line focusing on the cross-cultural transportation and evaluation of the feasibility and effectiveness of key evidence-based intervention programmes addressing children’s early behaviours.