Helena Vilaça has a PhD in sociology from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto, where she is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology. She is a researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the University of Porto. In 2011, she was a visiting professor at the University of Uppsala and, in 2017, she received a scholarship from the Fulbright “Religious Pluralism” Program in the USA. She was a member of the Council of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion (2014-2021) and coordinates the Sociology of Religion section of the Portuguese Sociological Association. She is also the national coordinator of the EUREL project (Sociological and Legal Data on Religions in Europe) and editor of Sociologia - Revista da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto. Her publications include Da Torre de Babel às terras prometidas (2006); The Changing Soul of Europe: Religions and Migrations in Northern and Southern Europe (2014); A religião no espaço público português (2019).