João Lourenço Marques is Associate Professor wih Habilitation at the Department of Social, Political and Territorial Sciences of the University of Aveiro, lecturing courses in the areas of Urban and Regional Planning (in the field of quantitative methods and techniques to support decision making). He received his PhD degree in Social Sciences from the University of Aveiro (European PhD), after the MsC in Innovation and Regional Development Policies, and his graduation studies in Urban and Regional Planning by the same university. He was visiting researcher in three Scottish Universities: St Andrews, Dundee and Heriot-Watt (Edinburgh).

Currently he is member of the research group on Planning and Innovation (GETIN_UA: https://www.ua.pt/getin_ua/). He is also member of the Research Unit in Governance, Competitiveness and Public Policies (GOVCOPP: https://www.ua.pt/govcopp), coordinating the Research Group of Systems for Decision Support – GOVCOPP .

He has been conducting research in the fields of strategic spatial planning, decision support systems, spatial competitiveness analysis, demographic dynamics and forecast, econometric models applied in the context of housing market and economic models for regional development. His current research interests are the development of tools and methodologies to support the decision to assess the impact of different public policies. The application of these methodologies and tools covers various issues (housing, demographics, mobility, planning, Services of General Interest, infrastructure, employment etc.) and various territorial levels (local to national scale).

He has been coordinating several research projects, developing Spatial Decision Support Systems to assess the impact of different public policies at different spatial scales, in the medium and long run (see for instance: the Research Project DRIVIT-UP). He has been also coordinating several projects (knowledge transfer), in the domain of education, housing and health; cooperating with public institutions, at several spatial scales (from local to national governments). In this kind of project, several methodologies have been developed and used in different phases of a policy making process, that allow different degrees and types of participation to capture the multiple preferences, wishes and choices, that corresponded to long-term visions.

He is a member of the board of the board of the Portuguese Regional Science Association (APDR: http://www.apdr.pt/). He was part of the installation committee of the Portuguese Association of Urban Planners (APU), in which the statutes of the formation of this Professional Association of Urban Planners were defined. He was also Portuguese Association of Urban Planner (APU: https://apu.pt/) (since 2018) and member of the board of the Portuguese Association of Spatial Planners (APPLA) (between 2012-2016), one of the three professional planning associations in the origin of APU.