An anti-fascist activist in his youth (see Waiting for Godinho, Editora Bizâncio, 2009), José Carlos Junça de Morais was exiled in Brussels with UN political refugee status from 1968 to 1974. He has a PhD in Psychological Sciences from the Free University of Brussels (ULB) and he was a full professor at that university, Director of the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, Dean of the School of Psychological Sciences and Education, Chairman of the Committee of Psychological Sciences at the Royal Academy of Belgium and a member of the National Reading Observatory (France). He is a doctor honoris causa at the University of Lisbon, a specialist in the cognitive psychology of reading and has published about 150 articles in international scientific journals. He is now an emeritus professor and continues to take part in scientific research within the framework of the Unité de Recherche en Neurosciences Cognitives at the ULB Institut de Neurosciences. He has done a lot of work to promote reading, such as publishing books, participating in a report presented to the Education and Culture Commission of the Brazilian parliament in 2003, directing a psycholinguistic study on learning to read and write in Portugal within the framework of the National Reading Plan, and helping to draw up the curricular goals for Portuguese, approved by the Ministry of Education and Science in 2012. He has published three works of fiction. He is an emeritus professor at Université Libre de Bruxelles.

Last updated: September 2013