Manuela Veríssimo

Manuela Veríssimo obtained her degree in Clinical Psychology from ISPA and her PhD in Developmental Psychology from the Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada. She is currently Vice-Rector and Coordinator of the William James Center for Research. She has coordinated several research projects funded by FCT and other institutions and has published extensively in national and international scientific journals. Her work has been presented at leading international conferences in Developmental Psychology, where she has also been invited to deliver keynote addresses and organize symposia.
Among her publications are studies on maternal secure-base scripts and children’s attachment security, secure-base representations in father–child and mother–child relationships, father involvement in early childhood, and the links between attachment security, peer relations, and social competence.
She has served as a consultant on research projects in Spain, France, Peru, and the USA. She chaired ISSBD 2024 and IAC 2022, and serves on several editorial boards, including Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development. In 2011, she received the Bowlby-Ainsworth Award from the Center for Mental Health Promotion and The New York Attachment Consortium, in recognition of her contributions to research and teaching in the field of Attachment Theory.
Manuela Veríssimo’s research focuses on the links between the quality of secure-base relationships during infancy and childhood and a range of outcomes in social and emotional development. Her work highlights the importance of understanding attachment as a network of relationships that children build in the early years of life, shaping and constraining their developmental pathways. Within this framework, she has a particular interest in father–child interaction and relationships. She is internationally recognized as an expert in attachment assessment, having trained research teams across the world. Her work continues to advance the study of attachment by integrating behavioural and representational approaches within a developmental and cross-cultural framework.