Sónia F. Bernardes is an Associate Professor with Habilitation in Psychology at the Department of Social and Organizational Psychology of Iscte-University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal. She is currently the Director of the Department and was former Vice-director of the Centre for Social Research and Intervention (CIS-iscte), Director of the Master in Social Psychology of Health and Head of the Research Group Health for All (H4A).

Her main research interests have generally revolved around social disparities in health and the role of psychosocial influences on chronic illness adaptation processes. She has mainly explored these issues in (chronic) pain contexts. Her current main lines of research aim to:

(1) understand the psychosocial processes accounting for health-care professionals’ (gender and social status) biases in the assessment and treatment of a patient’s pain;
(2) investigate the role of interpersonal dynamics in pain experiences, namely, pain-related social support interactions for the promotion of functional autonomy among adults with chronic pain.

Several national scientific awards have recognized her scientific contributions, namely, the Research Merit Award of the Portuguese Health Psychology Society (2008), Young Researcher Award of the Portuguese Psychological Association (2013), Best Paper Awards by the Portuguese Association for the Development of Pain Therapies (ASTOR) and the Grüenenthal PAIN Prize 2016.

She is regularly involved in outreach activities, e.g., healthcare professionals’ training, development of health-related guidelines, consultancy services (pain units, pharmaceutical industry, patient associations).