In June 2023, the Prime Minister of Portugal Antonio Costa made a state visit to Luanda where he visited the premises of the future Museum of the Struggle for Liberation, located in the former Casa de Reclusão, place of imprisonment for several protagonists of Angolan independence. As this was the first time the project was made public, Costa's visit was filled with political symbolism that is relevant in the context of post-colonial Lusophone cultural and heritage diplomacy. But, taking into account that the space in question also embodies a history of extreme post-colonial violence, what are the epistemological and political costs of the project? Based on the case study of the new museum, we propose to debate the processes of public ritualization and heritage performatization of the post-colonial Lusophone space. To this end, we will use the operative concept of “heritage spectacle” to discuss the actors, relationships and representations surrounding heritage processes.

NaMoura takes Lisbon’s Mouraria as the prism through which to investigate under-re-searched entangled geographies of heritage and security in the urban world. How do heritage and security align and interact to inform the imagining and making of cities? The project addresses this question by a) revisiting archival material and scholarship on the neighbourhood in light of the above new research question; and b) researching ethnographically the discursive and material unfolding of heritage and security as it is experienced and made sense of by a variety of people. NaMoura tests and comple-ments theoretical intuitions and analytical lenses that emerged from the PI’s work in urban India on a differently southern empirical ground. Insights from Mouraria—an epitome of unsettling contemporary urban dynamics (e.g. migration, touristiGication, gentriGication, regeneration) in which both security and heritage play overlooked roles —will contribute to theorise heritage and security anew, as interconnected urban pro-cesses.

In the framework of the current global debates regarding climate change, sustainability and energetic transition, the shift from a carbon-based to a green energy industry seems inevitable. While calls and resolutions towards ending fossil fuels slowly and irregularly make their way into the global diplomacy (e.g., COP26), the shift towards the electrification and digitalization of industrial, communication and transport sectors is creating an increasing global dependency on the extraction and processing of new resources. This is the case, for instance, of lithium (often dubbed the ‘oil of the future’) and graphite, essential components for the manufacture of batteries for cell phones, computers and electric cars, for instance. At the same time, ‘clean technologies’ such as green hydrogen, liquefied natural gas or renewables are presented as safe paths towards decarbonization and reduction of GHGs However, the study of the social, political and environmental consequences of the transition is still incipient. Such transformations, while they are generally positive steps towards energy sustainability and climate change adaptation, are generating new industrial sites, new complex economic relations and political mobilizations with socio-environmental consequences that need to be charted and studied from a social scientific perspective. We are talking specifically about environmental impacts of the new energy industry, its material and infrastructural articulations, conflicts over land property and use, political (public-private) articulations, labor and commercial opportunities, etc. In this framework, a new, energy-related geography is unfolding, complexifying the traditional cartographies of power based on North-South, postcolonial distinctions. This illustrates the increasing political centrality of such industries, both in terms of transnational diplomacies – the role of Nord Stream pipelines in the current Russia-Ukraine conflict being a case in point – and of crea...

This proposal is designed towards the development of a research agenda on how violence is inscribed in memory/heritage regimes, using as empirical framework the historical and sociopolitical unfolding of the Portuguese imperial and Estado Novo projects and the postcolonial trajectories of the CPLP/PALOP articulation. Broadly, we are interested in studying the material, aesthetic and epistemological vestiges of colonial and post-independence violence (or ‘debris’, in the words of Ann Stoler 2013) in the contemporary context, but propose to do so from the specific angle of how certain spaces which were once sites of political violence and terror – in their different biopolitical forms of confrontation, persecution, massacre, exploitation, destitution, etc. – are semanticized in the contemporary space of postcolonial heritage articulations. In this framework, we observe that different moments in the colonial and authoritarian history that has connected Portugal and its former colonies have been subject to very diverse heritage and memory appropriations and discourses in the framework of the postcolonial cultural and political framework of the CPLP: from the official, public memorialization of prisons such as Aljube and Peniche in Portugal, São Nicolau or São Paulo in Angola or Tarrafal in Cabo Verde, to the less visible and more problematic cases of severe famines in Cape Verde and Mozambique, or the massacres of Pidjiguiti in Bissau (1959), Wiriamu in Mozambique (1972), or of the Kuvale in Angola (1940-1) – or post-independence violences such as the 27th of May 1977 in Angola, etc. What kinds of processes enable such divergent modes of heritage-making and memorialization? How has this specific CPCLP/PALOP ‘heritage diplomacy’ dealt with the forensics of colonial violence? How has postcolonial violence shaped perceptions and memories of violent pasts? What is the process of material, semantic, aesthetic, architectural and landscape inscription of such regimes? How are ...

This research plan proposes a research agenda concerning the impact of sustainable development strategies vis-à- vis economic growth, offering a longitudinal empirical study of the issue of environmental sustainability in the Global South, with particular focus on Portuguese-speaking Africa and South America, and how they couple environmental vulnerability (droughts, flooding, pollution) with the adoption of the 2030 Agenda of Sustainable Development Goals, and at the same time promote largescale extractivist development projects (e.g. oil, Liquified Natural Gas and hydrocarbons, mining) which have significant environmental impact. How do governments, civic society and development agencies understand and handle the conflict between the expectations and desires of development stemming from the emerging extractivist ventures, and on the other hand the catastrophes induced by fossil fuel induced climate change? What are the strategies towards the production of social consensus being developed on behalf of stakeholders, and what are the reactions on behalf of the communities affected by both processes, as well as by civic society at large? In what terms is civic society mobilizing in response – indigenous knowledge and/or transnational networks?In response, we promote the concept of ‘energy activisms’ as framework for the study of contemporary civic mobilizations in the intersection of environmental concerns and demands for energy and sustainable economy as fundamental citizenship and sovereignty rights.