Bio notes

Vera Polido Baeta | Ph.D, Oxford Brookes University UK. Architect BA (Hons) FA University of Lisbon. In and outside academia, and since 2003, Vera has been working on the physical, social, and theoretical dimensions of spatial planning seeing from African cities. Expanding upon her recent study on the street economy space in Maputo, current research interests include the local forms of city-making in urban-rural territories undergoing infrastructure-led urbanization and reindustrialization as part of the Belt and Road Initiative in southern Africa in particular. Teaches at the RIBAstudio, Oxford Brookes.

Tiago Castela | Historian of architecture and spatial planning, as well as an architect. He teaches and does research on the theory and history of the political dimension of architecture and spatial planning, with a focus on Portugal and southern Africa in the Twentieth Century. In 2011 he completed a PhD in Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. He is an Assistant Researcher at the Center for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. At CES, he is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the exploratory research project “Regulating the Colonial Rural,” and was the PI for the exploratory project “Urban Aspirations in Colonial/Postcolonial Mozambique.” At Coimbra, he teaches doctoral seminars for the PhD in Architecture, as well as for the CES PhD programs in Postcolonialisms & Global Citizenship and in Cities & Urban Cultures. He is also part of the faculty of the College of Arts. During his doctoral studies, he taught at Berkeley and at the Higher School of Arts and Design at Caldas da Rainha, Portugal. He lives in Porto, and has a 6-year-old daughter.

Mustafah Dhada | Born and brought up in Mozambique, educated in England at Sussex and Oxford. At CSU Bakersfield, Dhada served ten years in academic administration as Dean of Arts and Sciences, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies, Dean of Extended Education, and Associate Vice President for Academic Programs, in a tenured capacity as professor of African and Middle Eastern history. His book The Portuguese Massacre of Wiriyamu in Colonial Mozambique, 1960-2013, (London: Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2017), won the American History Association’s Martin A. Klein Award for the most distinguished scholarly text in African history in 2017. The Wiriyamu Massacre: An Oral History, 1960-1974, (London: Bloomsbury Academic Press 2020) was equally well received. His first book, Warriors at Work was reviewed as a landmark study in the field of Luso-African revolutionary warfare, a vigorously revisionist work grounded in archival sources. Dhada was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Asiatic Society. 

Sandra Domingues | Degree in Geography and Spatial Planning (Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, 1995), Postgraduate in Geography and Regional Planning (Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, 1997) and Master's in Documentation and Information Sciences (University of Lisbon, 2012). Her professional career began in 1996 in the Cartography Area of the Portuguese National Library and in 2002 she joined the Center for Geographic Studies at the University of Lisbon. Since 2017 she has been part of the team at the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning at the University of Lisbon (IGOT-ULisboa), being the technical responsible for IGOT-ULisboa Information and Documentation Center, which integrates the Library, Map Library, Photo Library and Historical Archive of the Center for Geographic Studies.

Carlos Diogo Gomes | Master’s degree in Human Geography: Globalisation, Society and Territory from the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning of the University of Lisbon, with a dissertation entitled "Urban Regeneration and Commensality: the case of Funchal's Old Town" (2023). He is a collaborating researcher at the Center for Geographical Studies of the University of Lisbon (CEG-IGOT-ULisboa) and a junior researcher at the Center for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra in the REGRURAL project, funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). His research interests focus on urban issues, urban transformations of historic centres, namely their touristification; urban regeneration anchored in commensality, specifically in catering establishments. He is also interested in themes related to the development of geographical studies in the context of Portuguese colonialism in Africa.

Aharon deGrassi | Assistant Professor of Geography at College of the Desert. He is a critical, inter-disciplinary, and engaged geographer, with 25 years of experience focused on the political economy of rural development in Africa, particularly Angola. In addition to contemporary reconstruction and development in rural Angola, his projects include Amílcar Cabral’s dialectical political ecology, the colonial roots of Weberian approaches in African Studies, and the long-term rural transformations before and after Angola’s rural 1961 Baixa de Kasanje revolt. He received his a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and has held fellowships in Portugal and at Yale and Bayreuth Universities, as well as working with a range of research institutes and international organizations. His publications are available on academia.edu and he tweets at a_degrassi.

Rui Aristides Lebre | Architect and academic devoted to the study of the social, cultural and political implications of space production. His recent research involved examining the history and impact of wartime forced resettlement programs in Guinea-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique, exploring a multi-method approach combining architectural survey with ethnography and digital mapping. He is a Lecturer in Architecture at the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media at Birmingham City University and a Visiting Academic at the University of Oxford's African Studies Center.

Jorge Malheiros | Holds a PhD in Human Geography from the University of Lisbon. He obtained a master's degree in Human Geography and Regional and Local Planning and a degree from the University of Lisbon. He is currently Associate Professor at the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning at the University of Lisbon. He is currently a member of Directive Board of the Center for Geographical Studies at the University of Lisbon and of the Coordination of the Research Group ZOE (Urban and Regional Dynamics and Policies) of this unit. He is a member of the Scientific Council of the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning of the University of Lisbon. Develops research in the areas of urban social studies and international migration, with an emphasis on the integration of immigrants, demographic dynamics, gender relations, housing and segregation problems and border and transnational relations. He published several works in Portugal and abroad and participated and coordinated projects in the field of migration, integration, social exclusion and housing. He was President of the Portuguese Association of Geographers (2002 and 2004) and is currently a member of the editorial committee of IMISCOE-Amsterdam University Press / Springer (Migration), Portuguese correspondent for SOPEMI-OECD and Vice-President of the Portuguese Demographic Association (2013-present ).

Ana Vaz Milheiro | Assistant Professor with Aggregation at the Faculty of Architecture (University of Lisbon). Associate researcher at DINÂMIA’CET-IUL and researcher at African Studies Center (University of Porto). Former IIAS Fellow (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), research group “Re-Theorizing Housing …” (2019-20). PhD in Architecture (University of São Paulo). Head Researcher of four research projects focused on architecture and urban planning issues in the former Portuguese colonial African countries and housing, financed by the Foundation for Science and Technology, including “Dominance and mass-violence through Housing and Architecture during colonial wars…”. Invited researcher at Ghent University (2015-16) and Fellow Researcher at São Paulo University (2018, FAPESP). Chair of the Cost Action CA18137 “European Middle-Class Mass Housing”.

Francisco Roque de Oliveira | PhD in Human Geography by the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Assistant Professor at the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning at the University of Lisbon, also providing teaching collaboration in the Degree in Asian Studies at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon. He is researcher at the Centre for Geographical Studies at the University of Lisbon, associate researcher at CHAM – Center for Humanities at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, and corresponding member of the Portuguese Navy Academy. He develops research on the History of Cartography and History of Geography, in particular on topics related to the history of Portuguese tropical Geography in the context of late colonialism.

Major Joaquim Roberto | Graduate in History, postgraduate in Intangible Cultural Heritage and Master in Documentation and Information Sciences. He has been Deputy Director of the Military Historical Archive since December 2012.
He was a professor in the Department of Postgraduate Studies at the Military University Institute (IUM 2017-2020). He published the following works as an author: "The Organization, Description and Availability of Information of the Military Forces in Macau”; (2011) and “Colonial Overseas (1961-1974): The Portuguese Way of Making War” (2022). He was the author of book chapters: “The Great War, Portugal’s participation in the conflict” - In Memoriam, Loures in the effort of the Great War 1914-1918 (2016); “The Last Fusillated Man” - The Battle of La Lys, the Portuguese combatants (2018); “Arnaldo Garcez: Photographer of the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps” - Anais Leirienses: estudos & documentos (2019). He was a researcher in the TechNetEMPIRE project – Technoscientific networks in the construction of the built environment in the Portuguese Empire 1647-1871 (2020-2021); he is a researcher in the project ARCHWAR - Dominance and mass-violence through Housing and Architecture during colonial wars (2021-2024); and in the inJUSTiceWAR project - Crime and justice administration the Portuguese Colonial War 1961-1974 (2022-2024). He was the curator for various exhibitions, and has been invited to speak and lecture at various events in the field of military history.

Storia na Lugar | Storia na Lugar / [un]grounding narratives (www.storianalugar.net) is an experimental, multidisciplinary storytelling, analysis and documentation project. It focuses on storying communities engaged in various forms of negotiation with the built environment through myriad practices of affirmation and belonging while facing exclusion, insecurity or marginalization. We believe that creative approaches are needed to understand and speak of the impact that phenomena such as the rapid and asymmetrical growth of cities, the large investment in mass tourism, the lack of alternatives of materials and construction techniques, among others, have on communities and people’s lives. These contexts are conceived as case stories and (re)constructed as interactive documentaries.

Francesca Vita | Designer and researcher, having obtained her PhD at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto. Her doctoral thesis investigates the colonial legacy in domestic architecture in Guinea-Bissau, raising themes such as the appropriation and reframing of colonial heritage in contemporary times. Since 2018, she has been disseminating her research on colonialism, domestic space and architectural heritage at national and international conferences. In 2022, she was recognized by IASTE, the International Association For The Study Of Traditional Environments, with the Eleni Bastea Award for best article on urban studies. Currently, she is part of ISCTE's Dinâmia'Cet research center in the projects “ARCHWAR - Dominance and mass-violence through Housing and Architecture during colonial wars. The Portuguese case (Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique): colonial documentation and post-independence critical assessment” and “Women architects in former Portuguese colonial Africa: gender and struggle for professional recognition (1953-1985),” both coordinated by Ana Vaz Milheiro. From 2016 to 2021, she was also a professor of “Culture of Inhabiting” in the degree in Interior Design at ESAD (Matosinhos, PT) and in 2022 she coordinated the publication of the book "Dwelling in Transition – Experiences from Lockdown" published by Esad-Idea .