The recent self-coup in Guinea-Bissau has brought to a halt the last vestiges of the liberal-democratic processes initiated in the 1990s. Crises of liberal democracy have taken various forms in different regions of the world, reflecting the specific historical, economic, cultural, and political-institutional characteristics of each society. In the case of Guinea-Bissau, the democratisation process has been marked by discontinuities over the last three decades, with significant impacts on the organisation of the political system and the country’s socio-economic development.

This trajectory has been characterised by persistent institutional instability, high governmental volatility, military interventions in the political sphere, constraints on political participation and frequently inconclusive electoral processes. In this context, democracy remains fragile and subject to recurrent disruptions.

This workshop will bring together the research and activism of Guinean PhD candidates, namely Sumaila Jaló (CES-UC) and Luizinho Jorge Cá (UFRGS), with comments from researchers from the Centre for Social Studies: Joana Vaz Sousa (CES-UC), an anthropologist with extensive research experience in Guinea-Bissau, and Jonas Van Vossole (CES-UC), a political scientist specialising in democratic theory in the context of dependency dynamics and centre-periphery relations.

Bio notes

Luizinho Jorge Cá is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), having completed a doctoral internship at the Centre for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra. He holds a Master’s degree in Political Science from UFRGS, a degree in Sociology and a Bachelor’s degree in Humanities from the University of International Integration of Afro-Brazilian Lusophony (UNILAB). He is a member of the research group “Participatory Processes in Public Management” (UFRGS) and the group “Critical Theory and Psychoanalysis” (UNILAB). He also works as a correspondent for Rádio Sol Mansi in Brazil and was editor-in-chief of the community radio station N’djerapa Có. His research interests include liberal democracy, ethnicity and politics, relations between civilian and military power in Guinea-Bissau, and journalism. He is also a qualified electrician, having trained at the Brazil–Guinea-Bissau Vocational Training Centre (SENAI).

Sumaila Jaló is a PhD candidate in Discourses: Culture, History and Society at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra. He graduated with a degree in Portuguese Language Studies from the Tchico Té Higher Normal School in Bissau (2017) and completed a Master’s degree in Contemporary History at the University of Porto (2020). He was a secondary school teacher at the Agostinho Neto Secondary School in Bissau (2014–2018). He is an FCT scholarship holder (ref. UI/BD/154286/2022) and a member of the editorial team of the Bissau Cultural Agenda. His research focuses on topics related to education, history and culture in Guinea-Bissau and Portuguese-speaking African countries.

Jonas Van Vossole is a sociologist and economist, and holds a PhD in Political Science. He is an FCT-CEEC individual researcher at the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra and an assistant professor of Political Theory at the Higher Institute of Intercultural and Transdisciplinary Studies in Viseu. His main research interests include democracy, social movements, protests, critical theory, political economy and political ecology. His doctoral thesis analysed the impact of the euro crisis on democratic legitimacy in Southern Europe, with a focus on Portugal, and will be published under the title Crisis and Democracy in Portugal by Brill. Since 2023, he has been co-coordinator of ECOSOC (Ecology and Society Lab) at CES, regional coordinator of the Portuguese Association of Political Economy (Centro region) and a member of the FCT EJMAPPING project team. He also lectures as a visiting lecturer on various courses at the University of Coimbra.

Joana Vaz Sousa is a permanent researcher at the Centre for Social Studies. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from Oxford Brookes University, a degree in Environmental Biology from the University of Lisbon, and undertook postdoctoral research in Geography at the University of Geneva. Her work focuses on the intersection between anthropology and political ecology, analysing memories, conflicts and imaginaries associated with ecologies in transformation. She has conducted fieldwork in countries such as Ecuador, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya and Portugal, and has also taught at higher education institutions in Guinea-Bissau. She co-founded an interdisciplinary journal dedicated to strengthening scientific output in the country. She coordinated the project MARGINS and is currently part of the project “EJMapping - Counter-mapping environmental just conflicts in the European periphery: The case of Portugal” (CES-UC).