Sofia Lai Amândio is a sociologist (Ph.D), Lead Thematic Expert in Innovative Social Policies and Impact Assessment for the European Social Fund Agency, working with the European Commission, and a Researcher at the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology (CIES-Iscte).

She is a member of the Advisory Board of the SIMF – Social Innovation Mission Facility project (Horizon Europe, 2025–2029), which integrates social innovation into the five EU Missions (climate, cities, oceans/waters, soil and cancer), and a member of ESSI – the European School of Social Innovation, a school of thought dedicated to strengthening research and international cooperation in social innovation.

Her research focuses on public policies, evaluation and social innovation, with a particular emphasis on the institutionalisation of the evaluation of European funds and the role of social innovation in cohesion policy. She is frequently invited to lecture on these topics and to supervise master’s dissertations, and she writes opinion articles on European Funds and European politics for national and European media outlets.

As part of her doctoral thesis – “Young Actors in Management: Class Origins, Career Paths and Skills” – supervised by Bernard Lahire and António Firmino da Costa, she taught Sociological Theory at the Université de Lyon, collaborated with the Centre Max Weber/CNRS, published on Lahire’s sociology and undertook a research visit at the University of Leicester.

Together with Pedro Abrantes and João Teixeira Lopes, she coordinated the project “A Diversidade do Mundo” (CIES-Iscte/IS-UP), which led to the collective volume “A Vida entre Nós. Sociologia em Carne Viva”, bringing together 17 biographical narratives.

She was a postdoctoral research fellow in the project “Educational Challenges in Southern Europe: Equity and Efficiency in Times of Crisis” and, since 2021, has been studying Cohesion Policy and the European Structural and Investment Funds in Portugal. In this context, she participated in the project “Theory-Based Evaluation Applied to Complex Interventions” and has published, among others, in the journal Public Sciences and Policies on the evaluation of European funds.

She has also been involved in various networks and initiatives on diversity and multicultural cities, including serving on the scientific committee of the Portuguese Diversity Charter and taking part in an international project on Lisbon funded by The Leverhulme Trust.