The project’s mission is to study and disseminate Ruy Cinatti’s work, articulating his ethnographic research, in Portuguese Timor, with the vectors of his literary creation that intersect with his personal experience of the Timorese oral tradition.
The project arises from the discovery of Ruy Cinatti’s unpublished collection by Lúcio Sousa, the researcher responsible for the project, identified during previous research in the field of anthropology/ethnography. The objectives of this project are
1. Identification, transcription and translation into Portuguese of collections made by Ruy Cinatti in Portuguese Timor in the fifties and sixties of the twentieth century;
2. Publication of a book with comments on collections of Kemak and Bunak oral tradition, in Portuguese, by the author, crossing this with his literary production, especially poetry about Timor;
3. Write articles to be submitted to specialised journals;
4. Organise two seminars: one in Dili and one in Lisbon.
The team is composed of researchers from various fields of knowledge, thus allowing for the use of methodologies from the areas of anthropology/ethnography and literature. Archive work, collection of testimonies and ethnographic research will be carried out in East Timor.
The project is differentiated by (1) the unpublished corpus that will have to be transcribed and, in some cases, translated into Portuguese and (2) the inter and multidisciplinary character of the study, crossing ethnography and literature. It is funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation under the Gulbenkian Programme of Portuguese Language and Culture until 30 September 2021.
The team consists of: Lúcio Sousa (Lead Researcher – Universidade Aberta, IELT – NOVA FCSH), Isabel Barros Dias (Aberta University, IELT – NOVA FCSH), Paula Mendes Coelho (Aberta University, CEC-FLUL, IELT – NOVA FCSH), Vicente Paulino (Faculty of Education, Arts and Humanities of the Timor Lorosa’ National University, CEMRI – UAb), Irta Araújo (Faculty of Education, Arts and Humanities of the Timor Lorosa’ National University) and Keu Apoema (Federal University of Southern Bahia).
The project has as partners the Centre for Migration Studies and Intercultural Relations (CEMRI – UAb) and the Unit of Production and Dissemination of Knowledge of the Postgraduate and Research Programme of the National University of Timor Lorosae (UNTL).
[Image: Espólio Ruy Cinatti, Biblioteca Universitária João Paulo II, Universidade Católica Portuguesa]
