International Seminar Memory, diversity and identities brought together an international team

The International Seminar Memory, Diversity and Identities: Challenges for Intercultural Relations in the 21st Century was held on November 5th, 2019, at the University of Beira Interior (UBI), in the city of Covilhã. The auditorium of the UBI Central Library was the venue for conferences, thematic sessions and discussions promoted within the scope of the project Memories, cultures and identities: how the past weights on the present-day intercultural relations in Mozambique and Portugal?, which is funded by FCT / Aga Khan Development.

Members of the project work team presented investigations carried out over the past year and in progress and were attended by researchers, teachers, and students from the University of Beira Interior and other institutions from Mozambique and Brazil.

The opening conference was given by Professor Moisés de Lemos Martins, from CECS of the University of Minho, with the mediation of Professor Alda Costa, Assistant Professor and Director of Culture at the Eduardo Mondlane University of Mozambique.

The sessions with presentation of the research began with the theme Memory and museum exhibitions with communications: Entre memória e celebração: o estranho caso dos museus (in)desejados, Luís Cunha (CRIA, Universidade do Minho);O Museu Nacional de Etnologia (Portugal) e as representações de Moçambique, João Sarmento (CECS, Universidade do Minho); Arte africana, tradição e contemporaneidade. Sequências, ruturas e (algumas) problematizações, José Carlos Venâncio (Universidade da Beira Interior); e Curadoria, narrativização e memorialização em coleções e exposições museológicas: algumas considerações para início de investigação, Lurdes Macedo (CECS, Universidade do Minho)

The artist and researcher Catarina Simão opened the afternoon activities with the conference The National Museum of Ethnology of Nampula in the wake of her history: notes on the life of her images.

Following, the session on Portuguese and Mozambican Cinemas brought to the table communications: Do cinema ambulante em Portugal ao Kuxa Kanema em Moçambique: um olhar diacrónico sobre a história do cinema, Isabel Macedo e Eliseu Mabasso (CECS, Universidade do Minho; Universidade Eduardo Mondlane) e Cineastas emergentes em Portugal e Moçambique,Ana Cristina Pereira (CECS, Universidade do Minho). A apresentação de âmbito metodológico: Uma base de dados para a leitura e discussão de universos fílmicos, a partir de uma seleção das cinematografias moçambicana e portuguesa,Alice Balbé, Luís Camanho e Isabel Macedo (CECS, Universidade do Minho); e de análise fílmica: As sombras do passado colonial e as políticas de memória em Moçambique: reflexão a partir dos filmes O tempo dos leopardos e Uma memória em três actos,Edson Mugabe (Universidade Eduardo Mondlane).

The last thematic panel addressed the challenges of research, representations, and culture with communications: Complexidade da Política de Financiamento de Pesquisas Científicas em Moçambique, Celestino Joanguete (Universidade Eduardo Mondlane); O Curandeiro e o novo testamento na obra de Paulina Chiziane,Martins Mapera (Universidade de Zambeze); O passado colonial como problema não encerrado na contemporaneidade. A descolonização mental como possibilidade intercultural. O caso do Museu Virtual da Lusofonia, Vítor de Sousa (CECS, Universidade do Minho); e A relevância das fontes históricas e autorais na mediação da memória. Um estudo exploratório com manuais escolares de história portugueses e moçambicanos, Luís Camanho e Alice Balbé (CECS, Universidade do Minho).

The closing conference was held by an Associate Professor at the Department of Communication Sciences, Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Minho Rosa Cabecinhas who is the project’s co-PI. The conference entitled: Images and cleavages: a diachronic look at the visual representations of the liberation script in the Mozambican textbooks presented the first results of the ongoing research on the Mozambican and Portuguese history textbooks.

The International Seminar Memory, Diversity and Identities: Challenges for Intercultural Relations in the 21st Century was part of the program of the 5th International Congress on Cultures: What Culture (s) for the 21st Century? as a pre-Congress. After the conference, members of the research team also held a general meeting.

Opening International Seminar Memory, Diversity and Identities

The official opening of the International Seminar on Memory, Diversity and Identities: Challenges for Intercultural Relations in the 21st Century was held on the morning of Tuesday, November 5 at 9 am.

The full professor Joaquim Paulo Serra,  the scientific coordinator of Labcom.IFP, and the Chairman of the Portuguese Association of Communication Sciences and the assistant professor and Coordinator of the Organization of the 5th International Congress on Cultures, Urbano Sidoncha, both at Universidade da Beira Interior, welcomed the researchers and students present, along with Professor Moisés de Lemos Martins, Director of the Center for Communication and Society Studies at the University of Minho and project coordinator Memories, cultures and identities: how the past weights on the present-day intercultural relations in Mozambique and Portugal? ”.

The activities follow with the conference Globalization, historical memory, cross-cultural identities given by Professor Moisés de Lemos Martins.

The full program can be checked on the website.

Catarina Simão is the guest speaker of the International Seminar Memory, diversity and identities

The International Seminar Memory, Diversity, and Identities: Challenges to Intercultural Relations in the 21st Century will be attended by guest speaker, artist, and researcher Catarina Simão. Catarina Simão’s communication entitled “The National Museum of Ethnology of Nampula in the wake of its history: notes on the life of its images” will be the starting point for the discussion about the theme of the seminar and the artist’s experience.

Catarina Simão (n.1972) is an artist and researcher, living between Lisbon and Maputo. Since 2009, his work has been presented internationally in art biennials and museums and has also contributed specific content to film festivals, conferences and, academic institutions, both in Europe and Mozambique. He is currently developing a project that historically and critically addresses the presence of Makonde art in image archives in museums or other colonial collections. The R-Humor exhibition is being prepared for the Avenida da India Gallery in Lisbon, where it will question the relationship between violence and knowledge.

The International Seminar Memory, Diversity and Identities: Challenges for Intercultural Relations in the 21st Century will be held on November 5, 2019, in the Auditorium of the Central Library of the University of Beira Interior (UBI), in Covilhã – Portugal.

The complete program can be consulted on the website.

Admission is free.

Full Program available from the International Seminar Memory, Diversity and Identities: Challenges for Intercultural Relations in the 21st Century

Check out the full seminar program of the International Seminar Memory, Diversity and Identities: Challenges for Intercultural Relations in the 21st Century that will be held at the Auditorium of the Central Library of the University of Beira Interior (UBI) in Covilhã, on November 5th:

9:00 Sessão de abertura

Moisés de Lemos Martins (Coordenador do Projeto “Memórias, culturas e identidades: o passado e o presente das relações interculturais em Moçambique e Portugal”, CECS, Universidade do Minho)

Paulo Serra (Instituto Coordenador da Investigação, Universidade da Beira Interior)

Urbano Sidoncha (Presidente da Comissão Científica do V Congresso Internacional sobre Culturas: que culturas para o século XXI?, Universidade da Beira Interior)

9:30 – 10:15 Conferência I 

Globalização, memória histórica, identidades transculturais Moisés de Lemos Martins (CECS, Universidade do Minho)

10:15 – 10:45 Intervalo

10:45 – 12:30 Memória e exposições museológicas

-Entre memória e celebração: o estranho caso dos museus (in)desejados
Luís Cunha (CRIA, Universidade do Minho)

-O Museu Nacional de Etnologia (Portugal) e as representações de Moçambique
João Sarmento (CECS, Universidade do Minho)


Arte africana. tradição e contemporaneidade. Sequências, ruturas e (algumas) problematizações
José Carlos Venâncio (Universidade da Beira Interior)

-Curadoria, narrativização e memorialização em coleções e exposições museológicas: algumas considerações para início de investigação
Lurdes Macedo (CECS, Universidade do Minho)

12:30 – 14:00 Almoço

14h00 – 14:45 Conferência II
O Museu Nacional de Etnologia de Nampula no encalce da sua história: notas sobre a vida das suas imagens
Catarina Simão (artista/investigadora)

14:45 – 16:15 Cinemas português e moçambicano

-Do cinema ambulante em Portugal ao Kuxa Kanema em Moçambique: um olhar diacrónico sobre a história do cinema
Isabel Macedo & Eliseu Mabasso (CECS, Universidade do Minho; Universidade Eduardo Mondlane)

-Cineastas emergentes em Portugal e Moçambique
Ana Cristina Pereira (CECS, Universidade do Minho)

-Uma base de dados para a leitura e discussão de universos fílmicos, a partir de uma seleção das cinematografias moçambicana e portuguesa
Alice Balbé, Luís Camanho e Isabel Macedo (CECS, Universidade do Minho)

-As sombras do passado colonial e as políticas de memória em Moçambique: reflexão a partir dos filmes O tempo dos leopardos e Uma memória em três actos
Edson Mugabe (Universidade Eduardo Mondlane)

16:15 – 16:45 Intervalo

16:45 – 18:00 Investigação, representações e cultura

-A Complexidade da Política de Financiamento de Pesquisas Científicas em Moçambique
Celestino Joanguete (Universidade Eduardo Mondlane)

-O Curandeiro e o novo testamento na obra de Paulina Chiziane
Martins Mapera (Universidade de Zambeze)

-O passado colonial como problema não encerrado na contemporaneidade. A descolonização mental como possibilidade intercultural. O caso do Museu Virtual da Lusofonia
Vítor de Sousa (CECS, Universidade do Minho)

-A relevância das fontes históricas e autorais na mediação da memória. Um estudo exploratório com manuais escolares de história portugueses e moçambicanos
Luís Camanho e Alice Balbé (CECS, Universidade do Minho)

18:00 – 18:45 Conferência III

Imagens e clivagens: um olhar diacrónico sobre as representações visuais do script de libertação nos manuais escolares moçambicanos
Rosa Cabecinhas (CECS, Universidade do Minho)

International Seminar on Memory, Diversity, and Identities: Challenges for Intercultural Relations in the 21st Century

On November 5th, will be held at the Auditorium of the Central Library of the University of Beira Interior (UBI) in Covilhã, the International Seminar on Memory, Diversity, and Identities: Challenges for Intercultural Relations in the 21st Century.

This seminar aims to promote the sharing of scientific works and critical reflection on the role played by cultural, artistic, and educational products – collections of museums, textbooks of history, and cinema – in the reconstruction of cultural memory. It is also the pre-event of the V International Congress on Cultures – What Culture (s) for the 21st Century?

Organized in partnership with the University of Beira Interior, it is responsible for the project Memories, cultures and identities: how the past weights on the present-day intercultural relations in Mozambique and Portugal?, Funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology and the Aga Foundation Khan for Development.

This initiative is attended by researchers and guest speakers such as Eliseu Mabasso (Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique), Martins Mapera (University of Zambeze, Mozambique), José Carlos Venâncio (University of Beira Interior, Portugal), Moisés de Lemos Martins and Rosa Heads (University of Minho, Portugal), artist and researcher Catarina Simão, among others.

Free entry.

Permanent seminar discusses civic and historical responsibility of census

In times of significant vibration when facing, albeit reluctantly, the issues of racism, social and cultural discrimination, and quotas for social minorities in Portuguese society and beyond, the Census seeks to help question, debate, and open horizons of reflection.

Within the framework of the Permanent Seminars of Communication and Diversity and Postcolonial Studies of the Center for Studies in Communication and Society and the Cultures Past & Present project, civil society is invited to participate in the debate on “The Civic and Historical Responsibility of Census”.

The debate will take place on October 19, at 4 pm, at the Lúcio Craveiro da Silva Library and will be attended by Cristina Roldão (Center for Research and Studies in Sociology), Beatriz Gomes Diaz (Associations of Afro-Descendents), Bruno Sena Martins ( Center for Social Studies), Pedro Bacelar (Assembly of the Republic), Miguel de Barros (Center for Social Studies Amílcar Cabral) and Moisés Martins (Center for Studies on Communication and Society).

The moderation will be in charge of Rosa Cabecinhas and Sheila Khan, both from the Center for Communication and Society Studies.

Seminar: Refugees and refugeedom in world history, 1945 to 1975

The Exchange Project, funded by the European Research Council, headquartered at the Centro de Estudos de Comunicação e Sociedade, invites to the seminar “Refugees and Refugees in World History, 1945 to 1975”, by Peter Gatrell, of the University of Manchester, on 17 October 2019.

The seminar will take place at 2 pm, in the Sala de Atos of the Institute of Social Sciences, at the University of Minho, Braga. Admission is free, without prior registration.

Peter Gatrell teaches in the Department of History at the University of Manchester. Peter is affiliated to the University of Manchester’s Humanitarian and Conflict Research Institute (HCRI). In 2011 he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and in 2019 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. He has spent much of the past 20 years studying the history of population displacement in the modern world. His books include a trilogy on refugee history: A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War 1 (Indiana University Press, 1999), Free World? The campaign to save the world’s refugees, 1956-1963 (Cambridge University Press, 2011), and The Making of the Modern Refugee (Oxford University Press, 2013). He also retains an interest in the economic and social history of modern Russia to which he devoted much of the first half of his academic career. His latest book, The Unsettling of Europe: how migration reshaped a continent, will appear with Penguin Books and Basic Books in August 2019. He has directed several research projects on population displacement, state-building and social identity in the aftermath of the First World War and the Second World War. In July 2018 he started a three-year collaborative research project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Instituto de Ciências Sociais – Universidade do Minho entitled “Reckoning with refugeedom: refugee voices in modern history, 1919 to 1975”.

Tertulia with a session of the film “Enviado especial”

On July 19, the film “Enviado Especial” will be held in the presence of the directoress Nalini Elvino de Sousa, researchers, and directors at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. The meeting organized by the Cultures Past & Present project includes researchers Ana Cristina Pereira (CECS / UM) and Maria Paula Meneses (CES / UC), Mozambican filmmakers Isabel Noronha and Camilo de Sousa and moderation of Maria do Carmo Piçarra (ICNOVA-INL / UAL).

The documentary is about the life story of Aquino de Bragança, an intellectual and journalist who fought against colonialism and for the peace and independence of African countries along with leaders of the liberation movements. The friendship with Samora Machel is also dealt with in the film, sealed by the plane crash in which the two lost their lives in 1986.

The session will take place in Auditorium 1, Tower B of FCSH-UNL (Av. De Berna, 26-C), in Lisbon, at 17:30. Free entry.

Braga Book Fair: Virtual Museum of Lusophony will be presented at the Feira do Livro de Braga 2019

On July 4, at 6:30 p.m., the researchers Vítor de Sousa, Isabel Macedo, Pedro Costa and Fernando Lopes will discuss the potential of the Virtual Museum of Lusophony in the (re) construction of collective memory.

The Virtual Museum of Lusophony is a platform for academic cooperation in science, teaching and arts in the Portuguese-speaking countries and their diasporas, which extends to Galicia and Macau. It integrates universities, with research projects and post-graduate teaching in the area of Communication Sciences and Cultural Studies, cultural and artistic associations, in the construction and deepening of a Portuguese-speaking community. It intends to be a mechanism that invites the active participation of citizens, making records available, commenting on ‘works’ preserved in the museum, (re) building a collective memory.

The Feira do Livro de Braga 2019 is held from June 28 to July 14. The event will take place at ‘Avenida Literária’ located at Rua Dr. Justino Cruz, Rua Francisco Sanches and Largo São João do Souto, in the historic center of Braga.

Extended CFP: V International Congress on Cultures

The call for papers for V International Congress on Cultures – What culture (s) for the 21st century? was extended until June 30.

The Congress will be held from 6 to 8 November 2019, at the University of Beira Interior, in Covilhã – Portugal, and has the partnership of the project Cultures Past & Present – Memories, cultures and identities: how the past weights on the presente-day intercultural relations in Mozambique and Portugal?

Proposals for communication which fall within the scope of the following thematic working groups will be welcomed:

  • Communicate Culture
  • European Capitals of Culture Project (CEC)
  • Culture and artistic expressions
  • Culture, fashion, and lifestyles
  • Modalities of consumption in contemporary culture
  • Culture, environment, and development
  • Culture and lusophony
  • Culture, gender, and sexuality
  • Culture savings and creative economies
  • Culture, democracy, and citizenship
  • Cultures, networks, and digitalities
  • Policies and Management of culture and communication
  • University, Knowledge, and Culture

Communication proposals may be submitted in Portuguese, English or French.

More information available on the congress website.