Mariana Lameiras is a Senior Research Analyst at the United Nations University since 2023.
Mariana Lameiras currently serves as a senior research analyst at the United Nations University Operating Unit on Policy-Driven Electronic Governance (UNU-EGOV). Her expertise lies in e-participation, community engagement for critical and active citizenship, local e-government, including measuring and assessment, digital media, media governance, and public policy.
Mariana is actively engaged in several projects, including capacity development activities and research on beneficiary feedback and governance, as well as operational models for citizen engagement in Saudi Arabia. She also contributes significantly to research efforts related to assessing government portals at a global level based on the Local Online Service Index methodology (LOSI network) in collaboration with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) and at the local level, to the web presence of government in Portuguese municipalities.
In her career, Mariana has collaborated with different organisations, namely the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), doing research on the guidelines for political parties' regulation in the digital environment; the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), for the development of a Massive Open Online Course on Media Literacy for Government Officials and Policy-makers; and the European Commission, taking part in a consortium led by the University of Salzburg to launch a “Euromedia Ownership Monitor” (EurOMo) under the “European Democracy Action Plan”.
Mariana co-leads the group dedicated to “Policies, Regulation and Political Economy of Media” at the Portuguese Association of Communication Sciences (SOPCOM). She also serves as a national collaborator of the European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO) and the Institute for Information Law (University of de Amsterdam), developing studies and articles for IRIS – Legal Observations of the EAO and Merlin database, along with reporting on national media policies.
Mariana Lameiras holds a Ph.D. in Communication Sciences from the University of Minho, Braga, Portugal.