Between 2008 and 2010 she carried out a post-doctorate in sociology at FLUP and at the University of Padua (Italy) on the subject of Immigration, ethnicities and religion. In 2011, she was Visiting Professor at the Department of Theology at Uppsala University (Sweden) and in 2017 she was in the US on a State Department scholarship of the Fulbright SUSI Program “Religious Pluralism”. She was a member of the Board of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion (2013-2021) as a representative of the Iberian Peninsula, and she is the national coordinator of the EUREL network (Sociological and Legal Data on Religions in Europe and Beyond). She was also a member of the board of the Portuguese Sociology Association (1998-2000) and, in 2018, she founded and coordinates the Sociology of Religion section of APS.

She is currently a member of the board of the Department of Sociology, and of the board of the Doctorate in Sociology and director of the Revista Sociologia – Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto.

She was one of the founders and member of the first board of IS-UP and coordinated the research group “Social and Territory Recompositions” (2014-2021). She is currently a member of the editorial committee of IS-UP books and a collaborating researcher at the Center for Research in Theology and Studies of Religion (CITER) of the Portuguese Catholic University.

Her scientific work has been dominantly focused on religion, e.g., religious pluralism; migrations, ethnicity and religion; Portuguese Catholicism, recomposition of Protestant and Evangelical communities. These themes have been fundamentally investigated in various international and national networks and projects, of which the following stand out: “Religious Identities and Social Dynamics in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area” (2018-2019), funded by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation; the projects carried out within the scope of the GERICR network, “L'Eglise Catholique face aux nouveaux défis éthiques, sociaux et politiques, posés dans les pays d'Europe Occidentale de tradition catholique” (2007-2010) and “Las consecuencias sociales de la nueva pluralidad” religious in European countries with a Catholic historical majority” (2009-2013), both funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science; “Immigration, ethnicity and religion: religious communities and immigrants from Eastern Europe” (2008-2010), supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology; “Church and religion in an enlarged Europe” (2004-2008), supported by the Volkswagen Foundation; "Religious and Moral Pluralism" (1995-2001) and funded by the European Science Foundation. Currently, she continues to participate in the ongoing projects of the EUREL network and is a member of the team of the international project European Interdisciplinary Master African Studies (EIMAS), funded by the European Commission and started in December 2019.

Entre os trabalhos publicados destacam-se:

1. Da Torre de Babel às terras prometidas: pluralismo religioso em Portugal (2006), Afrontamento.
2. Imigração, etnicidade e religião: o papel das comunidades religiosas na integração dos imigrantes da Europa de Leste (2008). Lisboa: Alto-Comissariado para a Imigração e Diálogo Intercultural, 2008.
3. Religião em movimento: migrações e comunidades religiosas na Itália e em Portugal, (2010), Estratégias Criativas, (Coord. com E. Pace.).
4. Portugal: Secularization and Religious Vitality of the Roman Catholic Church in a Southern European Country (2012). In Pollack D., Müller O., Pickel, G. (Eds.) The Social Significance of Religion in an Enlarged Europe: Secularization, Individualization and Pluralization. (pp. 77–93.
5. Portrait du Catholicisme au Portugal (2012). In  A. Perez-Agóte, Portraits du Catholicisme : une comparaison européenne, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, (coautoria com M. João Oliveira).
6. Ethical Challenges of the Catholic Church in Portugal: The Case of Same-Sex-Marriage (2015). In K. Dobbelaere & A. Perez-Agóte (Coord.) The Intimate: New Conflicts between Religion and Politics), KADOC, Leuven University Press, (coautoria com M. João Oliveira).
7. The Changing Soul of Europe: Religions and Migrations in Northern and Southern Europe, (2014). Farnham, Ashgate, (Ed. with E. Pace, I. Furseth and P. Pettersson).
8. A religião na cidade: territórios, materialidades e comunicação. Sociologia. Revista da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, Temático (Processos sociais e questões sociológicas), 12–27, 2017.
9. Identidades religiosas e dinâmica social na Área Metropolitana de Lisboa (2019), Lisboa: FFMS, (Coord. Alfredo Teixeira).
10. A Religião no espaço público português (2019), Lisboa: INCM, (coautoria com M. João Oliveira).
11. Catolicismo: quo vadis? In P. Zaqueu-Higino; P. Andrade; R. Portella (orgs.). Catolicismo, quo vadis? Os rumos da Igreja Católica. Rio de Janeiro: Resistência Acadêmica, pp. 65-82.
12. Teixeira, Alfredo; Vilaça, Helena; Steffen, Dix (2020). Believers without Religion: Trends and Paradoxes in Portuguese Society.  Journal of Religion in Europe, 1-29. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/18748929-20201474
13. Vilaça, Helena (2020). A relação dos protestantes e evangélicos com a política em Portugal: das origens à atualidade. In D. Rodrigues & N. Lellis (Org.), Religião e Política: o contexto da lusofonia. São Paulo: Editora Recriar, 17-35. ISBN 978-65-86242-35-5