Joana

About Me

My name is Joana and I’m a writer currently working on a fantasy book series and animated film script about climate change for children. I am taking a Masters by Research starting in September in Health, Humanities and Arts at the University of Edinburgh to study how mainstream entertainment for children is delivering the message of climate change and how that impacts the awareness and mental health of the young audience.
I developed two projects that reflect this interest and allowed me to gather some knowledge about child psychology. The first one was the final project I developed in my last year of Secondary Education (12th year). The General Programme I attended for my Secondary Education in Portugal was Sciences and Technologies and the Optional subject I chose was Psychology, where I found great interest in Cognitive Development. For the General Formation subject called Project Area I chose to write and produce a short documentary film that I named ‘A Year with Autism’. For the production of this documentary I spent the year visiting autistic children living in and being educated at a catholic private institution for social solidarity. I interviewed the carers, the families and therapists from APPDA (the Portuguese Association for Developmental Disorders and Autism) to present a true narrative of the day-to-day lives of the children and the challenges and impact the disorder had upon the lives of those around them.
Four years later the topic of choice of my Masters Dissertation was the Psychology of Space where I investigated the relationship of Cognitive Development in Middle graders (7-12) and the design of spaces in their schools, conducting interviews with children from several public and private schools around Portugal and selecting case studies of traditional and contemporary schools.

I am a naturally caring person, it’s a genuine pleasure to me and not just a job to care and spend time both with children and elderly, they always teach me so much, and it would make me very happy to take care of your children or yourself/your mother/father if you see me fit and would like to know me better.