Joana Baptista is an assistant professor at the Iscte-University Institute of Lisbon. Her work focuses on the early relational determinants of child development, most notably the quality of caregiver-child interactions. Over the past years, she has devoted herself to the question of early adverse experiences and their effects, most notably the effect of deprived parental care on children's cognitive, emotional, and behavioral functioning. Among others, she is the PI of the project "All4Children - The Integrated Model of Family Foster Care to promote high-quality child welfare practices in Portugal", funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (2022.03592.PTDC). She is a national delegate COST action Euro-CAN - Multi-Response Sectorals to Child Abuse and Neglect in Europe: Incidence and Trends (CA19106). Joana Baptista also researches how mother/father-child quality of interaction influences infants' and preschoolers' executive functioning in both typically developing and in children born preterm. She has published in several leading journals.