João Carlos Afonso

João Carlos Afonso (Lisbon, 1970). Architect, post-graduated in "Urban Design" (IUL-ISCTE, 2003), PhD Student in History and Theory of Architecture (FAUP, 2004-present). Lisbon Deputy Mayor for Social Rights.

Joana Ascensão

Joana Ascensão is a filmmaker and a film programmer at Cinemateca Portuguesa-Museu do Cinema. She directed the film Pintura Habitada (Grand Prize for Best Portuguese Feature Documentary at the DocLisboa Festival 2006) that has been exhibited in various international film festivals, museums and galleries in Portugal and abroad, and is published on DVD. Since 2009, as a film programmer at Cinemateca, she has organized various publications and regularly writes about the films exhibited. She has curated several film programmes, such as “Visões do Deserto”, “Keaton, Todas as Curtas”, the retrospective “Marguerite Duras – A Cor da Palavra”, “Filmes das Cooperativas”, and co-curated the programmes dedicated to Ken Jacobs (in partnership with Curtas Vila do Conde, sessions at Cinemateca), Chantal Akerman and Alain Cavalier (in partnership with DocLisboa, sessions at Cinemateca). Most recently, in April 2014, she programmed “25 de Abril, Sempre – O Movimento das Coisas”. Between 2009 and 2012 she lectured photography and film courses at Department of Photography of the Universidade Lusófona. She graduated and obtained a Master’s degree in Communication Sciences from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, and completed Archimedia - European Training Network for the Promotion of Cinema Heritage, a series of specialized courses in different European universities, archives and cinematheques.

José António Bandeirinha

José António Bandeirinha (Coimbra, 1958) is an architect. He graduated from the Escola Superior de Belas-Artes of Porto in 1983, and is associate professor of the Department of Architecture of the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Coimbra, where he completed a doctoral dissertation in 2002 titled “The SAAL process and architecture around April 25th 1974”. Having as a main reference architecture and spatial organization, he has devoted his work to diverse subjects: city, housing, theater, culture. He is a senior researcher at the Center of Social Studies, and was coordinator of the Cities, Cultures, and Architecture research group. He was President of the Department of Architecture of the University of Coimbra and Pro-rector for Cultural Issues, as well as Director of the College of the Arts of the University of Coimbra.

Idalina Baptista

Idalina Baptista is a University Lecturer in Urban Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on the theoretical and practical challenges of governing urbanization and energy infrastructures in African cities. Her latest research project, “Electric Urbanism: the Governance of Electricity in Urban Africa”, uses the case study of the prepaid electricity system in Maputo, Mozambique, to examine the politics of urban infrastructures and just sustainable urban futures in the global South.

Tiago Castela

Tiago Castela is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, integrating the research group on Cities, Cultures, and Architecture. He holds a PhD in History of Architecture and Urbanism from the University of California, Berkeley (USA), and a 'Licenciatura' professional degree in Architecture from the Technical University of Lisbon (Portugal). His doctoral dissertation discusses the history of the illegalized working-class suburban subdivisions of the Lisbon area of Portugal, foregrounding the role of the government of informality in the formation of a dual planning regime during the late Twentieth Century. His current research prolongs this genealogy of planning in the postwar development project by exploring the history of colonial urbanism in Mozambique from the end of the Second World War to independence, focusing on the ways in which Portuguese state planning managed the informal production of urban peripheries in present-day Maputo. He is the coordinator of the exploratory research project "Urban Aspirations in Colonial/Postcolonial Mozambique: Governing the Unequal Division of Cities, 1945-2010".

Carlos Fortuna

Ph.D. (Sociology - State University of New York - Binghamton - 1989). Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Economics (University of Coimbra). Senior Researcher at the Center for Social Studies. Scientific Coordinator of the Masters and Doctoral Programmes in "Cities and Urban Cultures" (University of Coimbra). Areas of interest: Urban cultures; Tourism, heritage and memory; Identities and city images. Author of various books. His most recent publication is Simmel: A Estética e a Cidade (Coimbra, Imprensa da Universidade, 2010) (Org.).

Paul Jenkins

Paul Jenkins is an architect, planner and social researcher who has worked on a wide range of aspects in the built environment: architecture, construction, housing, planning and urban studies. This has included professional practice, policy-making, teaching/training and research - and has been with a variety of private sector, non-governmental, local & central government, international aid and community-based organisations, as well as academic institutions. More than half of his four decade career has been based in Central and Southern Africa (Malawi, Botswana, South Africa, Angola and especially Mozambique). Most recently he was Professor for Architecture Research at the Edinburgh School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture (University of Edinburgh) and Professor of Human Settlements at the School of the Built Environment, Heriot-Watt University. He has also been a Visiting Professor at Eduardo Mondlane University, Maputo; the University of Sao Paulo; as well as the School of Architecture & Planning at the University of Witwatersrand (Wits). He took over as Head of School of Architecture & Planning at Wits in September 2013. Paul has published widely on Sub-Saharan African urban issues, with many academic journal papers as well as a series of more globally focused books, including; “Urban development and civil society: the role of communities in sustainable cities”, Earthscan (2001); “Place identity, participation and planning”, Routledge (2004); “Housing and Planning in the Rapidly Urbanising World”, Routledge (2006); “Architecture, Participation and Society”, Routledge (2010); and most recently “Urbanization, Urbanism and Urbanity: home spaces and house cultures”, Palgrave MacMillan: Africa Connects (2013). The latter book examines Maputo as an in-depth case study of the ‘urban’ in Sub-Saharan Africa through an international, multi-disciplinary research programme which he initiated, entitled Home space in the African city (2009-12). His current research focuses on the nature of knowledge and the role of socio-cultural values in architecture and urban development, challenging dominant conceptions of the “modern”. He is working on two new books, one which again draws on the Home Space research – this time focusing on ‘popular architecture’ (provisionally entitled “Modernization, Modernism and Modernity in an African City”); and one for Routledge: “Order and disorder in urban space and form”, drawing on historic and contemporary approaches to urbanism and urbanization, as implemented in Brazil. He is also implementing a research-through-design project in peri-urban Maputo. Paul continues to work closely with colleagues in the Faculty of Architecture & Physical Planning in Maputo – the most recent joint project being an initial study of the architecture of recent middle class housing. This collaborative work will go forward in 2014-15 with a (South African funded) post-doctoral project examining the impact of the expanding middle class on the city, and another (Canadian funded) post-doctoral project examining how architecture education can influence ‘popular architecture’.

Mpho Matsipa

Mpho Matsipa is a lecturer in the Wits School of Architecture and Planning with a PhD in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley (2014). Mpho has worked as an architect and she has curated several exhibitions, including of the South Africa Pavilion at the 11th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice Biennale (2008). She has received several academic awards and scholarships, including the Fulbright Scholarship and a Carnegie Grant (2012-2013). Her research interests lie in developing an interdisciplinary design research approach in architecture, with a focus in globalization and urbanism in Southern African cities, spatial justice, culture, race and representation.

Maria Paula Meneses

Maria Paula Meneses is a senior researcher at the Center for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, integrating the Research Group on Democracy, Citizenship and Law (DECIDe). She holds a PhD in Anthropology from Rutgers University (USA) and a MA in History from St. Petersburg University (Russia). Maria Paula Meneses is also a member of the Center for Social Sciences Aquino de Bragança (CESAB) in Mozambique. She lectures in various doctoral programs: “Postcolonialisms and Global Citizenship”, “Governance, Knowledge and Innovation”, and “Law, Justice, and Citizenship in the XXI century”; she also co-coordinates the Ph.D. Program on Postcolonialisms and Global Citizenship. Previously she was a Professor at Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique. She recently published the results of a research project on the colonial violence and the cold war processes in southern Africa, ”As Guerras de Libertação e os Sonhos Coloniais” (with Bruno Sena Martins, 2013), and another one on legal plurality in an urban context, using Luanda, Angola as a case study. Her current work focuses on the question of the struggles over citizenship in Mozambique in the 1970s-1980s, with the transition to independence. Another project, focused on southern Africa in the second half of the Twentieth Century aims to explore the two divergent political paradigms: the “white dominant” southern Africa project lead by apartheid South Africa, and the nationalist struggles and project that aimed to broaden the emancipation project. Her work has been published in journals, books and reports in several countries, including Mozambique, Spain, Portugal, Senegal, United States, England, Germany, Colombia, among others. Recent publications include, co-edited with Boaventura de Sousa Santos, a volume on “Epistemologies of the Global South” (Almedina, 2009, 2011; Cortez, 2010), integrating contributions of scholars from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe; and (with Júlio Lopes) “O Direito Por Fora do Direito: As Instâncias Extra-Judiciais de Resolução de Conflitos em Luanda, Angola” (Almedina, 2012).

Ana Vaz Milheiro

Ana Vaz Milheiro (Lisbon, 1968).BA (1991) and Master (1998) in Architecture, Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade Técnica de Lisboa. PhD (2004), Faculdade de Arquitectura e Urbanismo da Universidade de São Paulo. Author of A Construção do Brasil – Relações com a Cultura Arquitectónica Portuguesa (2005), and Nos Trópicos sem Le Corbusier – Arquitectura luso-africana no Estado Novo (2012) awarded with the art and architecture critic and essayist prize by the Portuguese Section of AICA. Professor at the School of Technology and Architecture, ISCTE – Lisbon University Institute. Researcher from the Dinâmia-CET. Head Researcher for the research projects Os Gabinetes Coloniais de Urbanização: Cultura e Prática Arquitectónica (2010-2013), and Habitação para o maior número: Lisboa, Luanda, Macau (2013-2015), supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology.

António Olaio

António Olaio, artist, tenured auxiliary professor of the Department of Architecture of the Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Coimbra. Director of the College of Arts of the University of Coimbra. Solo exhibitions in Coimbra, Lisbon, Porto, Braga, Mallorca, New York, Berlin, and Frankfurt. As a researcher explores the conceptual potential of art as an object and instrument of reflection, especially regarding the relations between the individual and space, and between the artistic experience and architecture. Among his publications one can highlight the books “I think differently, now that I can paint”, revealing the extent of his intervention as an artist, and “Being an individual chez Marcel Duchamp” that, through the work of this artist, stresses the work of art as a product of thought.

Isabel Raposo

Isabel Raposo is an architect and an urbanist, as well as an associate professor at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Lisbon since 2002. During the 1980s, she worked for seven years in Mozambique at the National Institute of Physical Planning, focusing on planning for villages and suburban neighborhoods. Since then, she was a member and a coordinator of several research projects in Lusophone Africa as well as in Portugal, and has published several articles and books on rural and peri-urban urbanization and planning, on urban poverty reduction, on the rehabilitation of historic urban centers, and on the transformation of popular housing in rural and urban areas. During the last decade in Portugal, at the Faculty of Architecture, she supported and discussed in the university the issue of self-produced neighborhoods and the Right to the City. She advises several PhD students concerned by urban African issues, in Luanda, Maputo, and Moatize.

Manuel Carvalho da Silva

Manuel Carvalho da Silva was born in Viatodos, Barcelos, on November 2, 1948, in a family of small farmers. With no electricity at home, he dreamed one day to be an electrical engineer; he ended up being an electrician with industrial training at the Carlos Amarante school of Braga. With this training, he initially worked as an electrician. He interrupted his career due to compulsory military service, having fought in the war in Cabinda, between 1970 and early 1972. In 1972/73 he worked at Chromolit Portugal. In September 1973 he joined the company Electromecânica Portuguesa Preh, to which he was affiliated to until March 2011, having been a member of its Committee of Workers between 1974 and 2011.

Devoting himself since early 1974 to defending the workers, he held several trade union positions, in Portugal and in the European Trade Union Confederation. He was elected coordinator of CGTP (General Confederation of Portuguese Workers) in June 1986, and he held the post of General Secretary between December 1999 and January 2012. Simultaneously, he developed an increasingly intense social and socio-political intervention in Portuguese society, responding to numerous requests for reflections in various subject areas, notably trade unionism, labor, employment, economy, and development.

He continued his academic training at a higher level. In July 2000, he graduated in Sociology at ISCTE - Lisbon University Institute, having written a thesis titled “Social work: transformation and development”, addressing the lived experience of labor struggles in Grundig’s plant at Braga, and in the Ave River Valley. He concluded his PhD in 2007, also at ISCTE, with a dissertation titled “Centrality of Labor and Collective Action: Unionism in a Time of Globalization”.

Leonardo Veronez de Sousa

PhD Student in “Democracy in the Twenty-first Century” at the Center for Social Studies (CES), University of Coimbra, 2009 edition, developing a research project on alternative forms of production within the capitalist model of peri-urban agriculture. Master in Economics with specialization in Economics of Growth and Structural Policies, Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra. Collaborator of the Observatory of Participatory Practice PEOPLES’, with emphasis on research on the different processes and tools for citizen participation in the reinvention of local decision-making and deliberation over the territory.

Sofia Vilarinho

Sofia Vilarinho is a fashion designer. She graduated from Faculty of Architecture of Lisbon in 2006 and since 2010 is enrolled in a PHD design research titled: Mozambique Capulana in a D4S perspective: identity, tradition and fashion- able challenges for the XXI century. Her research focuses on how the concept of design for sustainability may introduce new epistemic and methodological approaches that will contribute to innovate the regarding about the tradition of capulana to boost identity building and fashion-able challenges for the XXI century. Her areas of interest are Fashion, African Fashion, cultural politics of dressing and design practices for sustainability.