Joana Matos Frias

Joana Matos Frias is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Lisbon, a member of the Board of the Centre for Comparative Studies, a collaborating member of the Institute of Comparative Literature Margarida Losa and of the project Estranhar Pessoa. Author of Cinephilia and Cinephobia in Portuguese Modernism (2014) and The images’ murmur (2018), among other books of essays, she has published articles on works of modern and contemporary Portuguese literature in several magazines and collective volumes.

Rita Anuar

Rita Anuar is a PhD student in Portuguese Studies at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa on an FCT scholarship. Her research project aims to explore the notions of knowledge and imagination in the works of Maria Gabriela Llansol and Walter Benjamin, paying particular attention to the defence of both authors’ affinities with childhood and the figure of the “child”. She has a degree in Communication Sciences and a master’s degree in Contemporary Art History from Universidade Nova de Lisboa. In her master’s thesis, Body, Experience and Impossibility in Rui Chafes – an analysis of Sonho e Morte, Comer o Coração and Unsaid, she devoted herself to the problems of art historiography surrounding the work of the Portuguese sculptor Rui Chafes. She has collaborated with publications in the fields of literature (Revista Limoeiro Real) and the visual arts (ArteCapital; Umbigo Magazine). She also writes and draws.

Ana Paula Ferreira

Ana Paula Ferreira has a PhD from New York University in Luso-Brazilian Studies. She is a Professor of Portuguese Studies at the University of Minnesota. Aside from pursuing other research topics, namely the critical representation of the “real” in Lídia Jorge’s fiction, she has focused on the recuperation of women writers from the first phase of Salazar’s Estado Novo. In addition to numerous articles, she published the critical edition A Urgência de Contar: Contos de Mulheres dos Anos 40 (Caminho, 2002) and Women Writing Portuguese Colonialism in Africa (Liverpool University Press, 2020). The latter traces the history of women’s agency as symbolic producers of Portuguese colonialism between the late nineteenth century and the second decade of the twentieth-first.

Marcela Azevedo

PhD student in Portuguese Literature at the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, focusing on the works of Maria Judite de Carvalho. She holds a Master’s in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature, with the dissertation Coleção de lavouras: Mimesis, a personagem. As a recipient of CAPES DS and PDSE scholarships, she is currently pursuing part of her doctoral research at NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal. She is also the general editor of Palimpsesto, the academic journal of the Postgraduate Program in Letters at UERJ, and is one of the co-editors of the book José Saramago e as escritas de si. Her research areas include contemporary Portuguese literature, women’s authorship, feminist and gender studies, transgression, and themes of silence and silencing.

Simão Palmeirim

Simão Palmeirim completed an BFA Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon (FBAUL) (2007), an MFA at Central Saint Martins in London (2009) and a PhD in Art Sciences at FBAUL (2016). He works as an independent curator and is responsible for several scientific production and dissemination actions (conferences, editorial coordination, teacher training programs, digital contents, etc.) As a researcher at IELT (NOVA-FCSH) he explores the relations between theory and artistic practice in geometrical abstractionism in Portugal, with a particular focus on the work of Almada Negreiros. He is currently a member of the Scientific Committee at CEDANSA (Almada Negreiros – Sarah Affonso Research and Documentation Center).

Ana Cristina Fonseca

Teacher and pedagogical coordinator in basic education, she is a PhD student, at the Universidade Aberta, in Portuguese Studies – Portuguese Literature, studying the medieval imaginary in the Chronicle of the Order of Friars Minor. She holds a Master’s degree in Medieval History with the dissertation Barregãs e Bastardas Régias da Primeira Dinastia Portuguesa from NOVA FCSH and a degree in History, variant of Art History, from the School of Arts and Humanities (FLUL).

Luísa Coutinho

Luísa Coutinho is a post-doctoral fellow under the Ruy Cinatti research project at the Institute for the Study of Literature and Tradition from NOVA University Lisbon. She holds a PhD in Anthropology, specialising in Anthropology and History, from the ICS-ULisboa (Instituto de Ciências Sociais of the Universidade de Lisboa), with a thesis on ethnography and family history in Timor-Leste. She has a Master’s degree in History from the School of Social Sciences and Humanities (NOVA FCSH). She has been carrying out research in Anthropology and History for 13 years on the themes of biographical and family narratives, memory, colonialism, post-colonialism, power relations, kinship, migration and Southeast Asia. She has been a team member and research assistant on research projects for ICS-ULisboa and the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, via the University of Kent. She is a collaborating researcher at the Centre for Global Studies at Universidade Aberta. She has eight years’ teaching experience in anthropology and research. She has published and edited articles, book chapters and books in the fields of Anthropology and History on research, biographical and family narratives, kinship, colonialism and post-colonialism, power relations and Timor-Leste.

Lourenço de Almeida Duarte

PhD student in Modern Literatures and Cultures at NOVA FCSH, he develops his thesis on forgotten poets of contemporary Portuguese literature, exploring the themes of memory, canon and lyrics from the 19th and 20th centuries. Graduated in Arts and Humanities and Postgraduate in Portuguese and Romance Studies at the School of Arts and Humanities (ULisboa), he enjoyed a research scholarship in Milan, Italy, for a year. He also teaches Contemporary Literature at the Senior Academy and Portuguese in secondary education.

Nina Lima

Graduated in Philosophy (2020) from Universidade Federal Fluminense. During his undergraduate studies, she received a scholarship for two consecutive years for Scientific Initiation by PROCAD/Capes, a programme to promote studies and research in aesthetics and philosophy of art. In 2023, she completed the Master’s program in philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro funded by a CAPES scholarship. PhD student in philosophy at the same institution, also funded by CAPES scholarship. Member of the Art Group, autonomy and politics. Research focused on the relationship between philosophy and literature, criticism, focusing on the literature of João Guimarães Rosa.

Jessica Di Chiara

PhD in Philosophy from PUC-Rio (2024), with a focus on Aesthetics and Contemporary Philosophy, with the thesis Friendship of forms: the poem-essay in Marília Garcia. Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from the Federal Fluminense University (2015) and Master’s degree in Philosophy with an emphasis on Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art from the same University, with the dissertation Forms of thought, forms of philosophy: A reading of The Essay as Form, by Theodor W. Adorno (2018), supervised by Prof. Dr. Pedro Sussekind and finalist of the Philosopher of Academic Excellence Award (2020). Was a Capes scholarship recipient during the doctoral program (2019-2023) and carried out a sandwich doctorate at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Capes-Print/2020-2021). Under the guidance of Professor Abel Barros Baptista, carried out a sandwich internship as a researcher at the Institute for the Study of Literature and Tradition (IELT – NOVA FCSH) developing the study plan Essay, another way of saying friend: Portuguese contribution to essay theories. She is the editor of the Alter (PUC-Rio/Brazil) and Dobra (IELT – NOVA FCSH) journals and coordinates, together with researcher Rita Basílio, the project On essay and essayism. As part of this project, since 2020, she has organized two international lecture series on the essay theme between Brazil and Portugal titled “Open Field – conversations about the Essay” and “Open Field: conversations about Essay and Art”. She is part of the FCT application teams for research projects: 1) LIBER ACT (2023.13060.PEX), proposed by Rita Basílio, and 2) Estranhar Lourenço (2023.12727.PEX), proposed by Pedro Sepúlveda. She is the author of articles published in Brazilian academic journals and book chapters, studying the relationship between thought and form in philosophy and literature, particularly regarding essay theories. She also served as a curator in the collective A MESA, which promoted exhibitions in its own gallery in Morro da Conceição, Rio de Janeiro, from 2015 to 2020. She is part of the Research Groups registered in CNPq: 1) Art, Autonomy, and Politics, coordinated by Professor Pedro Duarte and based at PUC-Rio; 2) The Eros of Critique, coordinated by Professor Patrick Pessoa and based at UFF; and 3) Poetry and Image, coordinated by Professor Patrícia Lavelle and based at PUC-Rio.