PT
Learning and Teaching Adviser in the HANDS Programme, a project funded by the New Zealand
Government that supports the Ministry of Education of Timor-Leste in the area of preschool education, and a researcher at the Linguistics Research Centre of the NOVA University of Lisbon (CLUNL). She is a PhD candidate in Linguistics at FCSH NOVA, specializing in Linguistics and Language Teaching. Her research focuses on L2 acquisition from a generative perspective and on the implications that phenomena such as L1 transfer have for L2 teaching, with a specific focus on Timor-Leste. In addition to her research, she has taught at the National University of Timor Lorosa’e, Timor-Leste (2004-2006 and 2020-2023), the University of Manchester, UK (2007-2009), and the Lisbon School of Education, Portugal (2010-2011). Having dedicated 20 years to Timor Leste and its languages, she is a co-author of the national curriculum for the 1st and 2nd cycles of Basic Education in the subjects of Tetum and Portuguese Literacy, for which she has written textbooks, a transfer primer, grammars, readers, and bilingual dictionaries. She is a certified Portuguese-Tetun translator recognized by the Portuguese Translators Association and is part of the task force at the National Institute of Linguistics of Timor Leste.