Monica Truninger, sociologist, senior research fellow at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa.

She earned a degree in Sociology from ISCTE in 1996 and worked as a research assistant in the Observa Program from 1997 to 2001 on various projects related to environment and society. In 2001, she went to England to do her PhD in Sociology at the University of Manchester. Her thesis entitled 'Organic Food in Portugal: Conventions and Justifications' is about the consumption and market of organic products in Portugal, particularly in the Lisbon area.

Between 2005 and 2008, she was part of an interdisciplinary team at the Universities of Bangor (Wales) and Surrey (England) as a post-doctoral researcher. The project, coordinated by Gareth Edwards-Jones and part of the British Rural Economy and Land Use program, analyzed the nutritional, environmental, and social impacts of the production and transportation of fresh vegetables from countries like Kenya and Spain to the UK, comparing these impacts with those of more localized production and transportation (UK). One of the contributions of this project was to question the concept of 'food miles' as a reliable indicator of food sustainability. In this project, the sociological part was dedicated to researching food cultures around local products in rural areas. The opportunity to work in an interdisciplinary team (with soil scientists, environmentalists, biochemists, nutritionists, and health economists) was enriching in analyzing complex problems such as climate change, consumption, and food. Perhaps that is why the first articles she published after her post-doctoral studies were interdisciplinary journals.

Before returning to Portugal, she also worked at Cardiff University (Wales) as a research assistant on a comparative project between the UK and Italy on school menus and sustainability. Her path through Environmental Sociology, Food, and Consumption would not have been possible without the important influences of the lively Environmental Sociology classes and dynamic projects developed in the OBSERVA Program.

The projects she has been developing and participating in teams cover various topics: food planning in the city-region of Lisbon (FoodClic, Horizon Europe); the application of SSH tools to the implementation of the European Green Deal (SharedGreenDeal, Horizon 2020);  the links between food shops in large towns that sell local foods with the productive territories in rural areas (STRINGS/FCT co-leadership); sustainability and the opinions of the Portuguese (through Large Surveys on Sustainability/Mission Continente, co-leadership); food safety and hygienic-sanitary issues in consumers (Safeconsume/Horizon 2020, ICS team leadership); food freshness (ESRC/UK, International Co-PI); food poverty and families with children (FFHT/ERC, ICS team co-leadership); food insecurity in families with children (POAT/QREN, leadership); alternatives and commons (TRANSE-AC, ICS team leadership); school food system and sustainable public procurement (FCT, leadership); food and migration (FCT, participation); renewable energy (FCT, participation); teenagers, energy, and ICT (FCT, participation); chefs (FCT, participation); domestic technologies and cooking practices (leadership, own funds); sustainable consumption (leadership, own funds); local products (co-leadership, own funds). The theoretical approach focuses on practice theories informed by a material semiotic sensitivity. The methodological approaches are mixed, ranging from quantitative to qualitative methods.