ECER Best Poster Award 2025

Sofia Marques da Silva is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Porto (FPCEUP) and a full member of the Centre for Research and Intervention in Education (CIIE). She is a member of CIIE's Directive Board and leads the Youth, Education, Diversity and Innovation research and advanced training group. At FPCEUP, Sofia Marques da Silva is the Head of the Department of Education. At EERA she is convenor of Network 5 (Children and Youth at Risk in Education), has been involved in activities of Network 14 (Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research) and was convenor and link convenor of network 19 (Ethnography). She was member of EERA Council, representing the Portuguese Society of Education Sciences, and in 2014, she acted as Chair of ECER (European Conference on Educational Research), hosted by UPORTO/CIIE. Her research experience includes doing ethnographic, participatory and mixed methods research on youth cultures and education in formal and non-formal education contexts. Since 2010 has been involved in researching children and young people from rural and border regions, resilient schools and communities in low density regions. She was the PI of the project 'Grow.Up in Border Regions in Portugal (2018-2022 supported by ERDF/Norte 2020 and FCT). Currently, she is the PI of project ROOTS - Ecologies of impact and value of educational mobilities: young adults returning to low-density regions after higher education (2025-2029, supported by ERDF/Compete 2023 and FCT). Publishing at national and international levels, co-edited reference works such as the Wiley Handbook on Ethnography of Education (2018) and SAGE's Doing Educational Research: Overcoming Challenges in Practice (2019).

Sara Faria is a PhD candidate in Psychology and has been involved in quantitative research on sense of belonging and youth and education in low density regions. She is member of the research community of practice Youth, Education, Diversity and Innovation of the Centre for Research and Intervention in Education of the Faculty of Psychology and Sciences of Education of the University of Porto.

• Title: Transitions From Higher Education to Low Density areas: Graduates’ Motivations For Returning And Impact On Their Home Communities
• Network: 14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research
• Presenters: Sofia Marques da Silva, Sara Faria
• Authors: Sofia Marques da Silva, Sara Faria, Nicolas Martins Silva, Marta Sampaio, Amélia Veiga
• You can view the poster here

"Transitions From Higher Education to Low Density Areas: Graduates’ Motivations For Returning And Impact On Their Home Communities"
Graduates’ motivations for returning and the impact on their home communities    
The poster accounts mixed methods research on internal migration of young people from rural regions in Portugal, focusing on young adults that returned to low density regions after completing higher education.  To understand the motivations to return after graduation and to study returnees’ perceptions on their contributions and impact to their communities are the two main aims the poster tries to cover through data from a questionnaire and biographic interviews. Motivations to return are linked to a sense of belonging to a place, friends and family and emotional ties and is also associated with new values and new social models related, with quality of life. The results point to four typologies of contributions to the development of their communities, indicating the importance of recognizing new indicators and meanings related to regional value, growth and cohesion.