Carla Martins holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of Reading (UK) and is Assistant Professor with Habilitation in the Department of Basic Psychology at the School of Psychology, University of Minho (UMinho) since 2003. In January 2024, Carla Martins got her Habilitation at the University of Minho unanimously approved by the jury. Between September 2014 and November 2021, she was Pro-rector for Internationalisation at UMinho and before then (January 2012-Septeber 2014) she was Vice-President at the School of Psychology and the President of its Pedagogical Council. Carla Martins integrates the Development and Psychopathology Laboratory at the Center for Research in Psychology (CIPsi) at the School of Psychology, has coordinated/participated in various funded projects, has published numerous scientific papers in impact factor journals, and has successfully supervised many master and doctoral students. The main goal of her research is to investigate the development of social cognition, with a special focus on joint attention in infancy, and the evolution of mentalizing capacities leading to the emergency of the Theory of Mind at the end of preschool years. To that end, Carla Martins has coordinated 3 longitudinal projects to date, mainly relying on observational methodology. To fully understand how children become proficient in socio-cognitive skills - joint attention, collaborative symbolic play, and theory of mind -, it is vital to look for the specific influence of the quality of the relationship and interaction between the infant/child and his/her mother and father. The main premise is that these capabilities represent outcomes of a developmental history embedded in a relational matrix, with the infant/child acquiring these abilities related to the self and others through socio-emotional experiences in close relationships. Moreover, she aims to explore the links between the interaction of socio-cognitive and socio-emotional development during preschool years, and school readiness (or developmental readiness for school) prior to children's enrolment in the 1st grade. Finally, Carla Martins is interested in understanding how mentalising abilities evolve over the course of development - from infancy to childhood, to adolescence, to adulthood.