Mónica is a sociologist with a Master’s in sociology and planning, in which she researched policing practices and citizenship at local levels. She has been developing her work in the area of police-citizens cooperation, namely on the implementation of bottom-up collective approaches for crime-prevention and delivery of community policing projects.

Mónica has a professional background in international cooperation (Portuguese National Commission for UNESCO) and on Prevention, namely prevention of youth risk behaviours and drug use prevention (Dependencies Prevention Division, Lisbon Municipality). Since 2008 she has worked in the Lisbon Municipal Police. Her main responsibilities cover police-community relationships and multi-agency cooperation, with a focus on crime prevention, police-community safety partnerships and community capacity building on security and safety issues.

Over her career, Mónica has participated in several international cooperation projects on urban security, namely in the areas of Criminal Prevention and Urban Planning (COST ACTION TU1203-Crime Prevention through Urban Design and Planning), intercultural mediation approaches to urban security (project TIME – Train Intercultural Mediators for a Multicultural Europe – Erasmus +), and on community policing (project SWaPOL – Social Work and Policing, Erasmus+; project CCI-Cutting Crime Impact, Horizon 2020; project on technical-police cooperation for community policing training of the Municipal Guard of Praia City in Cape Verd, UCCLA and Camões Institute; and project IMPPULSE – Improving Police-Population understanding for local security, Erasmus +). She has also been working in the methodological transferability of the community policing model developed in Lisbon, both in national and international contexts, namely in cooperation with the Council of Europe. She is currently working on the project IcARUS:”Innovative Approaches to Urban Security” (Horizon 2020).

Mónica is a trainer on the community policing model, targeting both police officers and civil society, as well as on intercultural approaches to urban safety. She is the author and co-author of several publications on Community Policing.