Dr Luis Calmeiro graduated in Physical Education and Sport, and completed a MSc in Sport Psychology, both from the Faculty of Human Movement (FMH), University of Lisbon, Portugal. His thesis consisted of a school-based intervention grounded on cognitive-behavioural principles to increase pupils’ out-of-school physical activity. Dr Luis Calmeiro received a PhD scholarship from the Foundation for the Science and the Technology (Portuguese Ministry for the Science and Higher Education) and moved to the USA where he completed his PhD in Educational Psychology (with an emphasis in Sport Psychology) at Florida State University. His dissertation focused on the analysis of the dynamic nature of the emotion-cognition-performance relationships during a set of competitive events. For his study, he was awarded the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP) dissertation award.
Dr Luis Calmeiro initially taught 7th to 12th grade PE in several public schools. He was also a handball player for 19 years and he coached a U20 Handball team in the Portuguese national championships before moving to the USA, and two years in Scotland. He taught a range of sport pedagogy, sport psychology, exercise and health psychology and health promotion topics in higher education for over two decades, in Portugal and in the UK, before joining NIE in 2023.
He belonged to the Portuguese research team in the Health Behaviour in School-aged children (HBSC) and was the PA focus group Portuguese representative. Currently, he collaborates with the Institute of Environmental Health (Supporting Environments for the Individual’s Lifespan Development), Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon, Portugal.
Dr Calmeiro has conducted research on cognitive appraisals, stress and coping, performance under pressure, and children and adolescents' health behaviours. He also developed an interest in examining coaches’ pedagogical practices and decision-making based as a function of individual (e.g., expertise) environment variables (e.g., practice vs competition). He is also interested in children and adolescents’ health behaviours and examining how teachers and coaches can organized their educational intervention to improve young people’s wellbeing.