Auxiliary Researcher at Lusófona University, CeiED - Interdisciplinary Research Center for Education and Development. Doctor in Psychology (2008) with a degree awarded by the University of Porto. Filomena Parada is a research collaborator at the Research Group Relationships, Change Processes and Wellbeing (Centre for Psychology at the University of Porto). Previously, she worked in (1) Finland at the University of Helsinki (2019-2022; postdoctoral fellow and research collaborator), where she was a research collaborator at the Minds Hub Research Group until August 2025, and the University of Jyväskylä (2017-2019, researcher/ MSCA Standard Individual Fellow); and (2) Portugal at the University of Coimbra (2009-2015) as a postdoctoral fellow at IPCHSDUC and at the University of Porto (1997-2009) as a researcher/doctoral fellow. At IPCHSDUC, she was a visiting post-doctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia. Since 2017, is a member of the editorial advisory board of the Journal of Vocational Behavior. In 2024, she was elected to the Executive Council of the EARA, the European Association for Research on Adolescence.

Her scholarship bridges research, practice, and policy, and relies on an integrative, dynamic, and process-oriented approach focusing on the understanding of the self-organizing, self-construing processes through which individuals-in-context learn, think, feel, act, and interact in everyday life and across time. Her research interests include (1) youth transitions to work and adulthood, positive youth development, and the development of sustainable careers, (2) goal processes at the heart of intentional development, self-regulation, and decision-making processes, (3) career counselling and development, (4) lifelong learning, (5) research careers, and (6)Contextual Action Theory (CAT) and its associated research method, the action-project method (APM). She is a mixed-methods researcher, which allows her to experiment with (1) the usage of procedures typical of the conceptual frameworks and methodological approaches she has been applying to her research; (2) other research approaches and methodologies (e.g., designing and using digital tools for research and career intervention, and participatory research approaches). She has several national and international peer-reviewed publications, as well as publications intended for diverse audiences.