Rita Guerra has a PhD in Social Psychology (2007), and she is currently an Auxiliary Researcher at the Centre for Psychological Research and Social Intervention (CIS_Iscte). She was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Psychology, University of Delaware for two years, and later in 2010 she joined Cis_Iscte.

She is interested in intergroup relations among ethnic majority and minority groups, common identity interventions to reduce prejudice and discrimination, acculturation dynamics,  on the dynamics of collective narcissism, extremism, and hostility, and more recently on hate speech.

She coordinated projects supported by several competitive grants from the Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT) and the European Commission (European Fund for the Integration of non-EU immigrants, EIF, Citizens, Equality,  Rights and Values Programme, (CERV), and participated in several others as a team member.

Her research has been published in respectable journals in her field (e.g., Psych. Science; Eur. J. of Soc. Psychology., Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, J. Personality and Social Psychology, J. of Applied Social Psychology, Eur. J. of Personality, Political Psychology, Journal of Social Issues) and chapters in edited peer-reviewed volumes (e.g., Handbook of Prejudice, Stereotyping and Discrimination), accumulating over 1000 citations.

She actively integrates research into teaching activities, teaching in master programs in intercultural relations, social psychology, and emotional sciences, and supervising PhD and master students. 

She is Associated Editor of Journal of Applied Social Psychology and served as a Guest Editor of a Special Issue, Unpacking the social psychology of populism, for the Journal of Theoretical and Social Psychology, as well as for a Special Section, Social Psychology as a social science, for the Portuguese Journal of Social Sciences.

She served as the Vice Director of CIS_Iscte from 2016-2020 and is currently a co-coordinator of the Thematic Line Global Governance of the recently created SocioDigital Lab for Public Policy (Iscte).