Marta Borges holds a degree in Social Work from the Instituto Superior de Serviço Social de Lisboa, a master’s in Communication Studies– Organizations and New Technologies from the Universidade Católica Portuguesa and is a PhD candidate in Social Work at Iscte – University Institute of Lisbon, where she conducts research in the field of harm reduction, with a thesis dedicated to the construction and validation of a collaborative practice model.

She currently heads the Social Emergency Unit (Núcleo de Emergência Social) of the Portuguese Institute for Social Security (Instituto da Segurança Social, I.P.), where she coordinates the National Social Emergency Hotline, the domestic violence area, and the National Social Emergency Observatory, and serves as the Institute's liaison officer with the National Association for Emergency and Civil Protection. At Iscte, she has been an Invited Assistant Professor since 2021, in the Soft Skills Lab, teaching mainly in the Critical Thinking and Design Thinking courses.

Her professional career spans more than two decades at the intersection of social work, health, and drug policy. Before taking up the direction of the Social Emergency Unit, she coordinated the harm and risk reduction area at ARSLVT/DICAD in the Lisbon and Tagus Valley region, with continued work in recreational settings, social reintegration, and community intervention since the early 2000s (CAT Taipas, IDT, CRI).

She is a researcher at CLISSIS – Lusíada Research Centre in Social Work and Social Intervention, and a member of the Portuguese Society of Psychosomatics, R3 – Riscos Reduzidos em Rede (the national harm reduction network), Correlation – European Harm Reduction Network, the Trauma Observatory of CES – University of Coimbra, and the European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. Her research interests include harm reduction, critical social work, social work in health, trauma-informed practice, and social emergency.