The research project MigraMediaActs aims to fill a gap in scientific research about narratives on migration
circulating within the public spheres in Portuguese language, by adopting a situated and intersectional
approach, namely the intersections between race, ethnicity, gender, and class, in view of the multi-layered
identities and recent societal transformations that have occurred in Portugal.
This project comprises interconnected tasks which aim to analyse media content and gauge the way that
symbolic de-bordering processes occur in the Portuguese public sphere, as well as media production
and how different social actors (e.g. activists, associations) contribute to these processes. Moreover,
using an action-research approach, the project will develop decolonial interventions.
The project is a pioneer in studying decolonial activism in the Portuguese-speaking public sphere, combining
different fields of research that have tended to be examined separately. Decolonising mediascapes is a
complex, multifaceted, and sensitive topic with multiple impacts on societies.
MigraMediaActs proposes to contribute to a greater visibility of persons who occupy a place of alterity in the
Portuguese national context as active agents in social transformation and in the construction of alternative
futures. It also aims to enable researchers, teachers, journalists, artists, and key civil society actors to engage
with each other constructively and directly contribute to the decolonisation of journalism and communication
studies, and embracing diversity as a tool for fostering social transformation and for creating more inclusive and just societies.
Main R&D Unit: Communication and Society Research Centre (CECS)
Duration: 2022 – 2025
Diana Andringa (CES – University of Coimbra, Portugal)
Evalina Gomes Dias (Founder and President of DJASS – Association of Afro-descendants, Portugal)
Fabio Malini (Federal University of Espírito Santo, Brazil)
Fernando Gonçalves (State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil))
Giovanna Leone (Sapienza Universitá di Roma, Italy)
Laurent Licata (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium)
Mamadou Ba (Founder member of anti-racist associations)
Manuel Chaparro (Universidad de Málaga, Spain)
Miguel de Barros (Co-founder of the Center for Social Studies Amílcar Cabral and member of the Research Council for Social Sciences in Africa)
Olga Bailey (Nottingham Trent University, England)
Tristan Mattelart (French Institute of the Press, University of Paris, France)
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Rosa Cabecinhas (1965, Leiria, Portugal) had her first migratory experience at the age of five, when she went as “a salto” to France. She studied and worked in various countries. She holds a PhD in Social Psychology of Communication and is professor at the Social Sciences Institute, University of Minho.
She is Principal Investigator of the project “Migrations, media and activisms in Portuguese language: decolonising mediascapes and imagining alternative futures”.
She has been coordinator of the interdisciplinary PhD Program in Cultural Studies (University of Minho) and coordinator of several research projects supported by national or international funds. She was Vice-Chair of the Cost action 1205 “Social psychological dynamics of historical representations in the enlarged Europe”. She has been visiting scholar at several universities in Europe and around the world, including among others: Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa-New Zealand; Universidade Politécnica and Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Mozambique; University of Texas at Austin, USA, Universidade Nacional Timor Lorosa’e, East Timor, among others.
Her research interests focus on intergroup relations, social representations, memory, media, diversity, decoloniality and social change.
She authored the book Preto e Branco. A naturalização da discriminação racial [Black and White. The naturalization of racial discrimination] (2017, 2 ed), and co-edited several volumes, including Cinema, migrations and cultural diversity (2019), Comunicação Intercultural: Perspectivas, Dilemas e Desafios [Intercultural Communication: Perspectives, Dilemmas and Challenges](2017, 2 ed); (In)visibilities. Image and Racism (2020) and Abrir os Gomos do Tempo: Conversas Sobre Cinema em Moçambique (2022).
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Carla Cerqueira holds a PhD in Communication Sciences – specialization in Communication Psychology from the University of Minho, Portugal (2012). Currently she is an Assistant Professor at Lusófona University, an integrated researcher at CICANT – The Centre for Research in Applied Communication, Culture, and New Technologies and collaborator at CECS – Communication and Society Research Centre. Her research interests include gender, feminisms, intersectionality, NGOs, activism, digital citizenship and media studies. She integrates diverse national and international research projects; she is the principal investigator of the project “FEMglocal – Glocal feminist movements: interactions and contradictions (PTDC/COM-CSS/4049/2021) and the project “Network Voices: Women’s participation in development processes” (COFAC/ILIND/CICANT/1/2021). She is the chair of the Research & Policy Committee of GAMAG – Global Alliance on Media and Gender. She integrates the board of APEM – Portuguese Association of Women’s Studies and she is part of RTP’s Opinion Council (mandate 2021-2025) as a member appointed by the NGOs to the Advisory Council of the Commission for Citizenship and Gender Equality.
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Gessica Borges is a social communicator with a degree from Anhembi Morumbi University (Brazil), and a Master in African Studies from the University of Porto (Portugal), with research on memory, identity, and resistance through the oral history of black Brazilian women. Currently she is a PhD student in Cultural Studies at the University of Minho (Portugal) and is part of the team of the project “MigraMediaActs – Migrations, media and activisms in Portuguese language: decolonizing media landscapes and imagining alternative futures” (CECS).
She is a self-taught writer since childhood and poet at heart with poetry published in Brazilian anthologies, including “Poetas Negras Brasileiras” (Editora de Cultura, 2021). She also works as an activist in Portuguese anti-racist collectives such as Núcleo Antirracista do Porto (NARP) and União Negra das Artes (UNA).
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I am a social anthropologist (ISCTE – Lisbon) with a Ph.D in Anthropology (University of Minho) and a professor at University of Minho and a researcher at CRIA.
My investigation was directed towards different themes, but it converged to the analysis of processes of identity construction and social dynamics. This line of research includes my work on the identity narratives in the Estado Novo (e.g. A Nação nas Malhas da sua Identidade, Afrontamento), but also the knots of consensus and dissensus woven around the idea of Lusophony (e.g. “Letras que desenham identidades”, Anuário Internacional de Comunicação Lusófona). I also worked on social memory (e.g. Memória Social em Campo Maior, Dom Quixote), focusing on a border context and taking into account the identity issues.
My recent works have followed a different line, searching for a register closer to the deconstruction of the dominant economic/political model (e.g. “Economic crises and political decision: words and meanings”, in Citizenships in Crises, ICS – with Virgínia Calado).
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Tiago Vieira da Silva is a PhD researcher in Communication Sciences at the University of Minho, and is currently developing his dissertation “Rethinking national identity from the April revolution to the present, through Portuguese cinema”, funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology. He will defend his dissertation in the current academic year (2022-2023). He holds a master’s degree in Communication, Art and Culture, also from the University of Minho (2016) and a bachelor in Film Studies at the Escola Superior Artística do Porto (2013). His areas of interest are the film studies, Portuguese language literatures, cultural studies and semiotics. Visiting professor at ESAP (Escola Superior Artística do Porto). He was part of the international project “Memories, Cultures and Identities: How the past weights on the present day intercultural relations between Mozambique and Portugal”, funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology and the Aga Khan Development Network (2018-2022), and collaborated on the national project “Mapping and Critical Senses of the Photographic Archive of the Companhia de Diamantes de Angola (Diamang)” (2020). He is also content manager of the Virtual Museum of Lusophony, current Cultural Unit of the University of Minho.
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She analysed a corpus of documentary films, interviewed the directors and conducted focus groups with high school students, using as stimulus a documentary film. She also interviewed teachers involved in National Cinema Plan activities in high schools and conducted film discussions on behalf of PNC in schools. Her current research critically engages intercultural communication and decolonial perspectives to explore the challenges of contemporary migrations and the representations conveyed by cinema. She was a member of national and international research projects: “Social psychological dynamics of historical representations in the enlarged European Union” (COST Action IS 1205; 2013-2016); “Memories, cultures, and identities: how the past weighs on the present-day intercultural relations in Mozambique and Portugal?” (CulturesPast&Present, FCT-Aga Khan; 2018-2022); and is a team member of the project “Migrations, media and activisms in Portuguese language: decolonising mediascapes and imagining alternative futures” (MediaMigraActs, FCT, 2022-2026).
Her main publications resulted from interdisciplinary research with a team consolidated through several research projects on memory, identities, social representations, and intercultural relations. She is the Intercultural Communication Group coordinator at the Portuguese Association of Communication Sciences (Sopcom) and Associate Editor of Vista Journal. She co-edited three books and five journal issues on communication, cinema, cultural memory, migrations, and intercultural relations in the last five years.
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Julia Alves Brasil holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from the University of Minho/Portugal and has master’s and bachelor’s degrees in Psychology from the Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES)/Brazil. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Postgraduate Program in Psychology (PPGP)/UFES (2018-2022).
Currently, she is a collaborator researcher at the Communication and Society Research Centre (CECS)/University of Minho. She was a researcher in different research projects, such as the COST Action IS 1205: “Social psychological dynamics of historical representations in the enlarged European Union”. She has experience in the fields of Social Psychology and Cultural Studies, with an emphasis on identity processes, intergroup relations and socio-cultural practices. Her main research interests include migration, intercultural communication, social representations, social memory, Latin America, and decolonial thinking.
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Researcher, professor and independent curator. Collaborating Researcher at the Centre for Studies in Communication and Society of the University of Minho (2020) and member of the TRAMA group of the State University of Rio de Janeiro (2020), Associate Professor at the School of Fine Arts of UFRJ (2010 -), Coordinator of the research network Post Colonial and Peripheral Cinemas. Post – PhD in Contemporary Studies from the University of Coimbra (2018-2020), Integrated Researcher at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of the 20th Century of the University of Coimbra, hired through the Stimulus to Scientific Employment (2018), coordinated the research project On the Fringes of Portuguese Cinema (2020),and the artistic residency Afroeuropeans, both funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Guest Professor at the Graduate Program in Communication at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (2021-).
Works in the areas: image and culture, post-colonial studies, intersectional feminism, decolonial, ethnic-racial relations and gender.
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Luiza Lins is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Communication and Society Studies (CECS), University of Minho. PhD in Social Psychology from the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB)/Brazil, Bachelor and Master in Psychology from the Federal University of Sergipe (UFS)/Brazil. She did her PhD internship at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM)/Spain, where she developed research activities with the Department of Social Anthropology and Social Psychology. She has developed investigations on intergroup relations, social representations, intersectionalities, prejudice and social identities. She is currently a member of the project team “Migrations, media and activisms in Portuguese language: decolonising mediascapes and imagining alternative futures”.
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Maíra Januário is a social communicator with a degree in Organizational Communication from the Federal Technological University of Paraná (Brazil), a master’s degree in Media and Society from the Polytechnic of Portalegre (Portugal), with research on communication in the bicycle delivery cooperative: the case of Mensakas (Barcelona, Spain). She is currently a PhD student in Cultural Studies at the University of Minho (Portugal) and is part of the project team “MigraMediaActs – Migrations, media and activisms in Portuguese language: decolonizing media landscapes and imagining alternative futures” (CECS).
She is an audio and video production technician, photographer, and director of the documentary “Primavera Secundarista” (2017), a short documentary about the student movement in Paraná (Brazil), already screened at the International Film Festival in Curitiba, academic events and spaces of social struggles in Brazil and Chile. Event producer, she worked as an event technician for the Secretary of Culture of Amazonas, and participated in the production of major jazz, music, theater and film festivals, including “Natal Glorioso” in the city of Manaus, Amazonas (Brazil).
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Alberto Teixeira de Sá is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication Sciences, University of Minho, where he held the positions of Deputy Director (2019-2021), and also Director in the Bachelor’s Degree (2015-2017) and Assistant Director of Master’s Degree (2017-2019). He is currently Assistant Director of Media Arts Master’s Degree (2021-).
He is a researcher at CECS (Communication and Society Research Centre) where he carries out studies on social representations and collective memory (memory studies), in particular, mediated memories in the digital age (digital archives and digital preservation of memory) – in which he obtained a PhD degree -, and Medieval Urban History – on which obtained Master degree.
He is a member of the funded scientific projects “AUDIRE – Audio Repository: saving sonic-based memories” [www.audire.uminho.pt] and “MigraMediaActs – Migrations, media and activism in Portuguese: decolonizing media landscapes and imagining alternative futures” [www.migra.ics.uminho.pt].
He was WG2 co-leader of e-COST Action IS1205 (Social psychological dynamics of historical representations in the enlarged European Union) and a member of the steering committee.
Likewise, he also teaches in the fields of media arts, digital audiovisual media, publishing design and digital compositing, on whose areas have oriented several PhDs and Master’s students.
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Ivo Neto holds a PhD in Communication Sciences from the University of Minho in a joint project with the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a journalist and editor at PÚBLICO, one of Portugal’s main newspapers.
He works mainly on issues related to information multiplatforms and disinformation processes. He also works as a professor in the Communication Sciences course at the University of Maia.
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Paula Lobo is a Post-Doctoral researcher on the Project ‘Gendered newsmaking: A gender-sensitive exploration of news production and organizations’ developed by Centro de Investigação em Media e Jornalismo and funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia. She holds a PhD in Communication Sciences by Universidade do Minho. She has taught subjects concerning ethics and deontology of the media, media economy and anthropology.
Her work has been published in many national and international articles, conference books and book chapters.
She is member of several scientific associations and has acted as reviewer in national and international publications on Communication and the Media. Her main research interests include media studies, gender, public sphere, citizenship and media literacy.
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PhD in Cultural Studies (University of Minho), Master in Culture and Communication (University of Lisbon) and Bachelor in Social Communication with specialization in Advertising and Marketing (Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing). Has experience in initiatives in Communication and Marketing, having worked with clients such as Action Aid, World Vision, WWF Brazil and ESPM-Rio. Worked on innovation projects in Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility, working with clients such as Carrefour, L’Oréal, The Brazilian Navy, VALE, Odebrecht, INEA/RJ and FIEC/CE. Currently, she is a Research Collaborator at the Studies in Communication and Society Centre (CECS), in Portugal. She is interested in researches aligned with themes such as identity, visual culture, memory, discourse, media and art.
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Ana Cristina Pereira holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies, from the University of Minho, with the thesis: “Otherness and identity in cinematographic fiction in Portugal and Mozambique.” She has a master’s degree in Educational Sciences from the University of Aveiro, a Diploma in Advanced Studies in Contemporary Culture and New Technologies from Lisbon Nova University, and a degree in Theater from the Superior School of Theater and Cinema of Lisbon/Music and Performing Arts of Porto.
In recent years, she has been a researcher in the projects: ‘On the margins of Portuguese cinema: a study on Afro-descendant cinema produced in Portugal’ (2018-2020) funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation; (De)Othering, developed at CES-Universidade de Coimbra (FCT; 2020-2022) and CulturesPast&Present, developed at the University of Minho in partnership with the Eduardo Mondlane University (Mozambique) (FCT-Aga Khan; 2018-2022). Since 2020 she has been a member of the COST Action Decolonising Development: Research, Teaching and Practice (2020-24), and since 2021 she is also a member of the Cost Action Traces as Research Agenda for Climate Change, Technology Studies, and Social Justice (2021-25).
Pereira has published articles and book chapters submitted to scientific arbitration; co-edited the book Abrir os Gomos do tempo: Conversas sobre cinema em Moçambique (2022), and issues of scientific journals (2020; 2021; 2022) on themes related to Visuality and Countervisuality. Since 2019, she has been the coordinator of the Visual Culture Working Group at SOPCOM.
As a cultural studies enthusiast, Pereira has dedicated her work to the dilution of boundaries between academia and civil society. Therefore, inside and outside academic forums, she has published, lectured, and participated in events with original contributions on (Post)Colonial visual constructions of otherness, social memory, race, and gender, from a decolonial and intersectional perspective.
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João Sarmento is an Associate Professor with Habilitation at the Geography Department, University of Minho, Portugal. He is a researcher at the Communication and Society Research Centre in the same university.
He graduated in Geography from the University of Porto, Portugal (1994), and received his doctorate in Geography from the University College Cork, Ireland (2001). His PhD thesis, Representation, integration and virtual space: Geographies of tourism landscapes in West Cork and the Azores, was awarded the National Prize of Geography Orlando Ribeiro. He obtained his habilitation in Human Geography from the University of Lisbon (2014).
He has published extensively in the fields of Cultural Geography, Colonial / Postcolonial Studies, Tourism Studies and Urban Studies, in journals such as Environment & Planning D., Journal of Historical Geography, Social & Cultural Geography, Tourism Geographies, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography or European Urban and Regional Studies.
He is the author of Fortifications, Postcolonialism and Power. Ruins and Imperial Legacies (Routledge, 2016). His research mostly focuses on Africa, and attempts to connect heritage, memory, landscape, violence and space.
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Sheila Khan is a sociologist, and currently a researcher at the Center for Communication and Society Studies at the University of Minho. She hold a PhD in Ethnic and Cultural Studies from the University of Warwick, she has focused on post- colonial studies in her academic career, with a special focus on relations between Mozambique and Portugal, including the issue of Mozambican immigrants in Portugal.
Among the themes she has worked on are contemporary Mozambican and Portuguese history and literature, narratives of life and identity from the global South, authorities of memory and post-memory.
Her recent books, “Portugal a Lápis de Cor: A Sul de uma pós-colonialidade” (Almedina, 2015); “Visitas a João Paulo Borges Coelho: leituras, diálogos e futuros” (et al., 2017, Colibri); “Mozambique on the Move: Challenges and Reflections” (with Paula Meneses and Bjorn Bertelsen, Brill, 2018).
She is currently a postdoc researcher on the project funded by the European Research Council, EXCHANGE. Her current research focus is inspired by the following motifs: to understand how the transnational sharing of DNA data and forensic genetic technologies may interfere with the social and political construction of citizenship, democracy and security regarding the presence of the Other as the post-colonial immigrant and as the illegal immigrant; and to critically explore if collective memory of former colonial countries (The Netherlands, United Kingdom and Portugal) may influence the debates on civic consciousness and human rights with regard to the use of DNA data for social control and surveillance. Her most recent book will be published by Routledge, with Nazir Can and Helena Machado, “Racism and Racial Surveillance. Modernity Matters” (2020).
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Jacob Lussento Cupata: is Doctor in Cultural Studies by University of Minho/Portugal, Master in Intercultural Relations by Universidade Aberta de Lisboa/Portugal and Licenced in Education Science, History Teaching option, by Universidade Agostinho Neto/Angola.Lecturer with the category of Assistant and Head of the Department of Teaching and Research in Social Sciences at the Instituto Superior de Ciências da Educação do Sumbe (ISCED/S), teaching the subjects of African History, Pedagogical Practices and Cultural Anthropology. He is currently collaborating researcher at the Center for Studies in Communication and Society (CECS) at the University of Minho, part of the project team “MigraMediaActs – Migrations, media and activism in the Portuguese language: decolonizing mediatic landscapes and imagining alternative futures” and Cultural Studies . Main research areas: social representations, interculturality, African history, analysis of school textbooks, memory and social identity.
Instituto de Ciências Sociais
Universidade do Minho
Campus de Gualtar, Edif. 15
4710-057 Braga, Portugal
Rosa Cabecinhas; Gessica Borges
migramediaacts@ics.uminho.pt
(+351) 253 604 695 , (+351) 253 601 751
facebook.com/migramediaacts
instagram.com/migramediaacts_/