Guida Veiga

Guida Veiga obtained a BSc in Psychomotor Therapy, at Lisbon University, Portugal, in 2007; and a PhD in Human Kinetics at the same University in 2015. In 2009 she started working in Évora University as an Invited Assistant Professor at the Sports and Health Department, and in 2015 she became an Assistant Professor in the same Department. Since 2010 Guida has been a visiting collaborator of the Focus on Emotions research lab at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Since 2017 Guida Veiga has been the Director of the Degree in Psychomotor Rehabilitation. From 2017 to 2019, she was a member of the Executive and Monitoring Committee of the Master's Degree in Psychomotricity. Her teachings and research specialties include the connection between body and emotion, particularly the relationship between children's behaviour (i.e., play and social interactions) and social-emotional and motor competence and the impact of body-oriented interventions (e.g., play therapy, therapeutic touch, relaxation techniques) on children's and adults' health and well-being. Guida’s research has been focused on typical development as well as on various clinical groups (e.g., children with hearing impairments, women with breast cancer, women victims of violence), involving collaboration with national Hospitals (e.g., Hospital D. Estefânia, Lisbon), Hospital do Espírito Santo, Évora) and international Institutions (Leiden University Medical Centre, The Netherlands). Guida is also interested in assessment methods, such as psychomotor assessment, systematic observation, sensor technology, or biological health indicators. She has developed an observational software (observideo.com), and her work with RFID sensors was awarded in the contest Smart Data City - The Netherlands in 2016. Since 2009 Guida has supervised several Bachelor, Master and Doctoral dissertations. The Doctoral theses are focused on two main topics: the relationship between body and emotions, specifically the effect of body-oriented interventions on mental health; the relationship between children's spontaneous behaviour and social-emotional functioning. Guida has participated in national and international research projects. Currently, she is the principal investigator of the project Knowledge Academy OUT-TO-IN, which was recently awarded a grant from Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. The project aims to promote children's social-emotional competence through body-oriented practices implemented outdoors at preschools. She has also coordinated the Portuguese team of Erasmus+ Program "Outdoor Oriented Practices for Early Childhood Education".