Maria Barbosa Ducharne is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences of the University of Porto (FPCEUP) and an Integrated member of the Center for Psychology at The University of Porto. She is responsible for the Group for Research and Intervention in Out-of-Home Care and Adoption at FPCEUP. She is the researcher responsible for the AdoPt - Adoptive families' strengths, difficulties, and service needs: A Portuguese follow-up study (funded by FCT, PTDC/SOC-ASO/4158/2020; http://doi.org/10.54499/PTDC/SOC-ASO/4158/2020); the National Study on Residential Care Quality (EQAR), and the Adoption, Family and Development Study. She is the coordinator of the Masters in Child Rights and Protection at FPCEUP. She has extensive experience in supervising academic work, having served as the advisor for eight doctoral theses and 97 master's theses in psychology and child protection topics. Her research interests include child development, early adversity, parent-child relationship, child's rights, adoption, family foster care and residential care. She is committed to transferring scientific evidence to practice and policy. As a researcher, she belongs to relevant groups such as the International Network on Infants and Toddlers and Child Protection, the International Research Network on Foster Care, the Therapeutic Residential Care Work Group and the International Network on Participation of Children in Alternative Care. She is also a member of the steering committee board of EUSARF (European Scientific Association on Residential Care for Children and Adolescents). She chaired the EUSARF 2018 Porto conference and was an invited keynote speaker at ICAR7 - International Conference on Adoption Research 7 in Milan, Italy, in 2021. Her scientific output includes over 120 publications, encompassing book chapters, scientific articles, publications on open science platforms, and technical reports.