Sofia Lai Amândio, a sociologist with a Ph.D., serves as an Advisor for Strategy and International Relations on the Steering Committee of Portugal Inovação Social 2030 and as a Researcher at the Center for Research and Studies in Sociology (CIES-Iscte) [15% of her time].

In her doctoral thesis, titled "Young Actors in Management: Class Origins, Career Paths, and Skills," supervised by Bernard Lahire and António Firmino da Costa, she had the opportunity to collaborate directly with the Centre Max Weber/CNRS and publish on the sociology of the French author. Additionally, she visited Jack Barbalet at the University of Leicester.

She co-coordinated the experimental project "The Diversity of the World" (CIES-Iscte/IS-UP) with Pedro Abrantes and João Teixeira Lopes, which resulted in 17 biographical narratives published in the collective book “Life Among Us: Sociology in the Flesh.”

As a post-doctoral research fellow, she participated in the project "Educational Challenges in Southern Europe: Equity and Efficiency in Times of Crisis" (PTDC/IVC-SOC/5079/2012).

Currently, she is studying Cohesion Policy and the European Structural and Investment Funds in Portugal. She is involved in the research project "Theory-Based Evaluation Applied to Complex Interventions" (POAT-77-2021-06) and has published an article in Public Sciences and Policies on the institutionalization of the evaluation of European funds in Portugal. Additional findings were presented at national and international conferences in 2022. She also supervises master's thesis on these topics.

Her interests extend to other areas as well. She was a member of the scientific committee for the Portuguese Charter for Diversity and participated in an international project on Lisbon as a multicultural city, funded by The Leverhulme Trust.

She is frequently invited to give lectures on the various research projects she has developed over the years.