The Gender Workshop organises monthly Feminist Talks with guests who work for women and gender equality in the various fields of activity. The guests of this session will be Vânia Couto and Cristina Valentim. Highlighted is Vânia Couto's work in the field of music and projects to promote women's culture and the arts, from popular and traditional Portuguese culture to artistic pedagogy.

Bio Notes

Vânia Couto, Woman and Artist, is a singer, multi-instrumentalist, and activist and has been working on Traditional Portuguese Culture since she was 22, having had GEFAC (Grupo de Etnografia e Folclore da Academia de Coimbra) as her school. Her work has involved the preservation of natural and historical heritage, participation in local and inclusive projects linked to the tradition and culture of each community, as well as collections and artistic works dedicated to women: “Fado de Coimbra na Voz da Mulher” – Concerto e Doc’; Disco de Divulgação do Património do Fado em todas as regiões de Portugal – “Viagens do Fado”; Discos de Cololha tradicional Portuguesa e Património Musical – 3 Albums by Macadame; DiscoFonte Grande (JACC); Disco “Rezas, Cantigas e outros Quebrantos” (with Cesar Prata) - collections of traditional music and Portuguese oral and religious tradition. She's part of the Pensão Flor Project, which was awarded the best Antena 1 album of 2013, and now has two albums and national recognition. She was a teacher and founded an Education for the Arts project that involved learning about Portuguese musical and craft culture and heritage. She founded the CATRAPUM Association, where she works in educational and cultural services and intervention through art, working with gipsy communities, social neighbourhoods, CATs, and autism, among others. She founded the Coro Das Mulheres da Fábrica, made up of more than 60 women from the Centre Region, who reinterpret the Portuguese and World Popular Songbook.

Cristina Sá Valentim is a social-cultural anthropologist (MA and BA, University of Coimbra) and holds a PhD in Sociology (area Postcolonial Studies, CES-University of Coimbra in her PhD, she analysed cokwe folk songs collected in the 1950s in north-east Angola, articulating music and forced labour with practices of colonial domination and resistance. She carried out ethnographic fieldwork in Portugal and Angola, combining research in sound documentary colonial archives and oral history. In 2022 she published the book Sons do Império, Vozes do Cipale. Canções cokwe e Memórias do Trabalho Forçado nas Lundas, Angola, which resulted from her thesis being the winner of the Agostinho Neto International Historical Research Award (Edition 2019-2020). She is currently a Research Fellow at ICS-University of Lisbon (CEEC-IND, FCT, 4th Edition), continuing her research into musical/sound collections produced in Angola during late Portuguese colonialism.