Colloquium

Maps of Memory: a European post-colonial cartography

June 27, 2024, 9h30-13h00

Online event

Bio notes

Margarida Calafate Ribeiro is a researcher-coordinator at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, coordinator of the research line Europe and the Global South: legacies and dialogues (with Paula Meneses and Miguel Cardina) and coordinator of the Trauma Observatory (with Luísa Sales and Inês Nascimento Rodrigues). She holds a PhD in Portuguese Studies from King's College, University of London (2001), a master from Universidade Nova de Lisboa and a BA from the University of Aveiro. She is a lecturer and coordinator of the PhD programme Postcolonialisms and Global Citizenship (CES/ FEUC) (with Patrícia Branco and José Manuel Mendes) at the University of Coimbra. With Roberto Vecchi she is responsible for the Eduardo Lourenço Chair, Camões / University of Bologna. She is Research Fellow da Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages, Universidade de Oxford. She is a member of the scientific committee of the research laboratory "LABEX - Les passés dans le présent", University of Paris Nanterre, and of the Scientific Editorial Scientific Committee of the Secretariat of State for Communities / National Press Casa da Moeda and of the Commission for the Commemorations of the Centenary of Eduardo Lourenço. In 2015 she received a grant from the European Research Council (ERC), with the research project "MEMOIRS - Children of Empire and European Post-Memories", which she coordinated at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra. She is currently coordinator of the FCT project, "MAPS - Post- European Memories. European Memories: A Post-Colonial Cartography". She is author, co-author and organiser of several books, book chapters, scientific articles and other writings.

António Sousa Ribeiro is emeritus professor of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra. From 1991 until 2008 he was responsible for Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais. Among several other functions, he has been in previous years president of the Scientific Board of the Faculty of Arts (2000-2002), president of the Scientific Board of the Centre for Social Studies (2003-2007), coordinator of the board of directors of CES (2014-2019) and director of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures of the Faculty of Arts (2009-2011). He has published extensively on several topics in Austrian and German Studies (with special emphasis on Karl Kraus and Viennese modernity), Comparative Literature, Literary Theory, Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Studies and the Sociology of Culture. His current research interests include Austrian and German Studies, Comparative Literature, Postcolonial Studies, Translation Studies, Studies on Modernism, and studies on violence, culture and identities. He is also active as a literary translator, having been awarded the National Prize for Translation 2017.

Maria da Graça dos Santos is a full professor at the University of Paris Nanterre, where she is director of the Department of Lusophone Studies. She is a researcher at the Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaires sur le monde Lusophone and at the Centre d'Histoire Culturelle des Sociétés Contemporaines (Université Versailles). She is also a director, actress and theatre teacher. She is co-founder of the company "Cá e Lá" (Compagnie bilingue français/portugais) and director of "Parfums de Lisbonne" - Festival d'urbanités croisées entre Lisbonne et Paris. Her work focuses in particular on the Salazar dictatorship and censorship. He has written several articles on the history of European theatre and Portuguese theatre. He recently published the book Miguel Torga: le dialogue inassouvi. Essai d'analyse de son écriture dramatique (Peter Lang, 2018). She is also the author of Dictionnaire encyclopédique du théâtre à travers le monde (Bordas, 2008) and published Le spectacle dénaturé, le théâtre portugais sous le règne de Salazar 1933-1968 (CNRS éditions, 2002).

Roberto Vecchi is Associated Professor of Brazilian and Portuguese Literature at the Faculty of Foreign Modern Languages and Literatures, University of Bologna and also professor and director of the PhD Programmes on Iberistic Studies at Universities in Bologna, Milan and Bergamo. He is an associated researcher at the Centro de Estudos Sociais, University of Coimbra and an invited researcher of the Brasilian CNPq. Since 2007, he holds the "Eduardo Lourenço Chair" at the University of Bologna/ Instituto Camões, with Margarida Calafate Ribeiro. His current research interests include Brazilian and Portuguese Studies, particularly the areas concerning to history, literature, trauma, memory and violence criticism. His recent publications include: 'Antologia da Memória Poética da Guerra Colonial' (ed. with Margarida Calafate Ribeiro; Afrontamento, 2011); 'Topografia delle culture' (ed. with Rita Monticelli; Bologna, I Libri di Emil, 2011); 'Excepção Atlântica. Pensar a Literatura da Guerra Colonial', (Afrontamento, 2010), 'Eça de Queirós, La corrispondenza di Fradique Mendes. Memorie e note' (ed. with Vincenzo Russo; Diabasis, 2009); 'Atlantico Periferico. Il Postcolonialismo portoghese e il sistema mondiale' (ed. with Margarida Calafate Ribeiro and Vincenzo Russo; Diabasis, 2008).

Felipe Cammaert Felipe Cammaert was a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra and is a researcher at the Department of Languages at the University of Aveiro. He has a PhD in Romance Studies and Comparative Literature from the University of Paris Nanterre, with a thesis on the representations of memory in the work of António Lobo Antunes and Claude Simon. He was a research fellow at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (2017) and an FCT postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Comparative Studies (FLUL, 2008-2014), in the areas of comparative literature and contemporary Portuguese literature. He has been a lecturer at the Universities of Picardie (France), Lisbon (Portugal) and Los Andes (Colombia) and a researcher at the National Library of Colombia. He is a translator from French and Portuguese of contemporary authors for Latin America. His most recent book is Pasts Reappropriated: Postmemory and Literature (2022).

António Pinto Ribeiro holds a degree in Philosophy (1980, UCL), a master's degree in Communication Sciences (1995, UNL), PhD in Culture Studies (2015, UCL). He taught at several Portuguese and Foreign Universities. He was artistic director and responsible curator at several Portuguese cultural institutions, including Culturgest and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. He was general commissioner of "Past and Present - Lisbon Ibero-American Capital of Culture 2017". His main research interests are developed in the field of contemporary art, specifically African and South American. Of his sixteen book it is important to highlight Novo Mundo - Arte Contemporânea no Tempo da Pós-Memória (2021), Podemos descolonizar los Museos? (2020), Peut-on décolonizer les musées? (2019), "Africa the four rivers - The representation of Africa through european and North American travel literature" (2017). As editor highlights: "The Desire to Live in Common" (2018), "Lessons, I and II" (2008), "The urgency of Theory" (2007).

Bruno Machado is a researcher at the Centre for Geographical Studies at the University of Lisbon (ULisboa). He graduated in Geography at ULisboa, dedicating his final work to the theme of "return", entitled African memories, European place: the identity of the "returnee". Machado completed his master's degree in Population, Society and Territory, ULisboa, with the dissertation The children of the "returnees": the African experience and the creation of memories, post-memories and representations in post-coloniality. He obtained a PhD in Human Geography from the same university with the thesis Intra-European mobility and the welfare state: social protection in the aspirations and trajectories of Portuguese migrants, exploring the relationship between migration and social protection. His main research interests are imaginary geographies, identities, memories, migrations, post-colonialism and post-memory. Machado is responsible for the executive management of the Reimagining Europe database.  

Fátima da Cruz Rodrigues is an invited assistant professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Porto and a professor at the University Lusíada Norte. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Coimbra. Her thesis "Antigos Combatentes Africanos das Forças Armadas Portuguesas: a Guerra Colonial como Território de (Re)conciliação" [Former African Combatants of the Portuguese Armed Forces: the Colonial War as a Territory of (Re)conciliation] won the 2014 Fernão Mendes Pinto Award. She developed her postdoctoral studies within the scope of the MEMOIRS- Children of Empires and European post memories project, funded by the European Research Council, (n.º 648624). She is a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra in the research line Europe and the Global South: heritages and dialogues. She is a researcher in the MAPS (FCT - PTDC/LLTOUT/7036/2020) and TRAMES - (Erasmus +) projects. She is vice-president of the COST Global Atrocity Justice Constellations Action (CA18228). Her main research interests are related to issues on colonial/liberation wars, memory and postmemory, colonization, decolonization and postcolonialism, and crimes committed in war contexts.

Fernanda Vilar was a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra and is a consultant for UNESCO, Paris. Her interests centre on post-memory cultural and post-colonial studies, as well as subaltern and peripheral studies. She is the author of Slamizando nas periferias. Colonial post-memory in Paris, Lisbon and Brussels (2023). She holds a PhD in Comparative African Literatures from the University of Paris Nanterre (2015) and was selected in the same year for the United Nations Academic Impact Award (UNAI). She worked at the European Commission in external communication (2016). She completed her master's degree with a scholarship of excellence at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, where she taught Portuguese as a foreign language and Portuguese-language literature (2010-2012). She taught Portuguese at the University of Marne la Valée (2012-2013).