Fernanda Ferreira was born in Portugal and raised in Winnipeg, Canada. She received her Bachelors degree (Honours) from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, a Masters in Linguistics and another in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology in 1988 from UMass. Before coming to UC Davis, she was a member of the faculty at Michigan State University and at the University of Edinburgh. Her areas of research include psycholinguistics and reading, and she has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (Canada). She has served as Editor of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and as Associate Editor of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition as well as the Journal of Memory and Language.