Susana Atalaia (Tomar, 1978) is a Research Fellow in Sociology at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa (ICS-ULisboa), and member of the LIFE Research Group and the Observatory on Families and Family Policy (OFAP). She carries out research on stepfamilies from an interdisciplinary perspective that combines different areas of knowledge: sociology, demography, law and public policy. Her research interests focus on new trends in family life (cohabitation, births outside marriage and stepfamilies); children in step and blended families; stepparent's legal status; family solidarities; family policies; parenting and gender.

She holds a degree in Sociology (ISCTE, 2003) and a Ph.D. in Social Sciences, specialty General Sociology (ICS-ULisboa, 2012), with a thesis on parenting in stepfamilies, in which she analyses the role of the stepfather. Between 2014 and 2016, she was a member of the research team for the project "Men's Roles in a Gender Equality Perspective", funded by the European Economic Area Financial Mechanism (EEA Grants), and co-authored the White Paper Men and Gender Equality in Portugal (2016). She published "Parenting in stepfamilies: revisiting the stepfather's role" (2018); "Why are caring masculinities so difficult to achieve? Reflections on Men and Gender Equality in Portugal" (2018) and "The gender(ed) division of labour in Europe: patterns of practices in 18 EU countries" (2019). She has also been a member of the research team for the PARENT project - Childbearing and Parenting in the context of Low Fertility, Family Change and the Economic Crisis (2018-2021), funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).