Signe Arnfred
is a sociologist and a gender scholar. She works at Roskilde University in Denmark, where she is associate professor at the Department of Society and Globalization and part of the Centre for Gender, Power and Diversity. 2000–2006 she worked at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden, as coordinator of the research programme on Sexuality, Gender and Society in Africa. She has written a number of articles critical of development discourse on gender, such as e.g. “Women, Men and Gender Equality in Development Aid. Trajectories, Contestations” in Kvinder, Køn og Forskning 2011, and she is the author/editor of the following recent books and journal special issues: Re-thinking Sexualities in Africa (2004), “Sex and Politics, Case Africa” (special issue of NORA) 2009, African Feminist Politics of Knowledge, together with Akosua Adomako Ampofo (2010), and Sexuality and Gender Politics in Mozambique. Re-thinking Gender in Africa (James Currey, 2011).
Bjørn Enge Bertelsen
is Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen and works on issues such as state formation, egalitarianism, cosmology, violence and rural-urban connections. He has worked on Mozambique since 1998 and has authored Violent Becomings: State Formation, Sociality and Power in Mozambique (2016) and has recently co-edited Navigating Colonial Orders: Norwegian Entrepreneurship in Africa and Oceania (with K.A. Kjerland, 2015), Violent Reverberations: Global Modalities of Trauma (with V. Broch-Due, 2016), and Critical Anthropological Engagements in Human Alterity and Difference (with S. Bendixsen, 2016).
José Luís Cabaço
was born in Maputo. He participated in the struggle for the independence of Mozambique and held government positions after his country’s liberation. He holds a degree in Sociology from the University of Trento, Italy, and a PhD in Anthropology from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. He was a professor at the Polytechnic University of Mozambique and Rector of the Technical University of Mozambique, where he currently is Professor Emeritus. He is the author of the book Mozambique: Identities, Colonialism and Liberation, ANPOCS Award 2008, edited by UNESP in Brazil, and by Marimbique Publisher in Mozambique. He has chapter in anthologies published in Mozambique, Brazil,
Ana Bénard da Costa
is a social anthropologist with an MA and PhD in Interdisciplinary African Studies in Social Sciences (ISCTE- Lisbon University Institute, 2003) and researcher at CEsA (Centre for African, Asian and Latin American Studies) in the Lisbon School of Economics and Management (ISEG)/Universidade de Lisboa (ULisboa) and at the Centre for International Studies (former Centre of African Studies) of the ISCTE- Lisbon University Institute in Lisbon. Currently she is carrying out research on urban development in Maputo (Mozambique) and on the links between processes of social and cultural change in Mozambican families, development and higher education. Ana Bénard da Costa is the author and co-author of several books and articles published in national and international scientific peer-reviewed periodicals and was IP and team member of nine research projects.
Linda van de Kamp
is a cultural anthropologist and assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Amsterdam. Her research activities concentrate on urban regeneration, religion and ritual, transnational circulation, media, and gender and reproductive issues. Linda has done in-depth research on the emergence of Brazilian Pentecostalism in Mozambique. She is the author of Violent Conversion: Brazilian Pentecostalism and Urban Women in Mozambique (James Currey, 2016).
Ana Margarida Fonseca
(PhD, University of Lisbon, 2007) is adjunct professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Guarda, Portugal, and researcher of the Centre for Comparative Studies (University of Lisbon) and Institute of Comparative Literature Margarida Losa (University of Porto). She is the author of Projectos de Encostar Mundos. Referencialidade e Representação na Literatura Angolana e Moçambicana dos Anos 80 (APE Revelation Award for Literary Essay, Difel, 2002) and of Percursos da Identidade. Representações da Nação na Literatura Pós-Colonial de Língua Portuguesa (Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian/FCT, 2012). Her research interests lie mainly
Anna Maria Gentili
is Emeritus Professor of the Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna. Since 1968 she has taught African Political History and Political Development, at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Bologna, at the University of Dar es Salaam, at the Centro de Estudos Africanos of the Eduardo Mondane University of Maputo, Mozambique. She did field research in Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania and Mozambique. Member of the Academy of Sciences of Bologna (section social studies); Resident Member of the Alma Mater University of Bologna Institute of Advanced Studies; Chairman of the Amilcar Cabral Center, Bologna (Library, documentation and research activities on Asia, Africa, Latin America); Scientific Board of the Review Afriche e Orienti (Bologna); Member of the Academy of Sciences of Bologna (section social studies). Anna Maria Gentili’s present research activities are: the crisis of the Nation state in Africa; democracy and citizenship; conflicts and conflict resolution in Africa with special reference to Southern Africa the Great Lakes and Congo/Zaire.
Randi Kaarhus
is currently Professor of Anthropology at Nord University in northern Norway, being on leave from a position as Professor of Development Studies at the Faculty of Landscape and Society at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Holding a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Oslo, she has carried out research both in South America and South-Eastern Africa, and has published on land rights, access to and conflicts over natural resources, livelihood strategies, food and gender. Over the last 15 years she has in particular focused on rural Mozambique, visiting all the provinces, and seeking to understand people’s livelihood conditions in different parts of the country.
Sheila Khan
is a sociologist and currently a researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Social Sciences (CECS.UMinho). She holds a PhD in Ethnic and Cultural Studies from the University of Warwick. Her main research topics are: post-colonial studies, with focus on the relations between Mozambique and Portugal, including the question of Mozambican immigrants in Portugal; Mozambican and Portuguese contemporary history and literature; narrative of life and identity from the global South; memory and post-memory authorities. Her most recent book is entitled Portugal a Lápis de Cor. A Sul de uma pós-colonialidade
Maria Paula Meneses
a Mozambican scholar, is currently a Principal Researcher at Center for Social Studies of Coimbra University; previously she was a Professor at Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique. Her principal areas of interest include postcolonial debates in African contexts, with a focus on the debates related to the production of national history, the challenges to official historical narratives by other memory(ies) and narratives of belonging in contemporary identity struggles. Her fieldwork in Mozambique, as well as in Angola, Kenya and East Timor has contributed to broaden the study of the relationships between the modern state and traditional authorities, opening up the analysis of the multiple modernities coexisting across the Global south. In this context, she has been documenting the silenced narratives of women in frontline contexts, aiming to understand the participation of African women in local politics and in shaping the nationalist discourse. Her current research is concerned with the contemporary Mozambique archive and memory culture, with a focus on food, emotions and cultural transmissions. The goal is to magnify the forms and meaning of coexistence and dialogues across cultures generated in contact zones in the Global south, beyond the written and spoken words. Maria Paula Meneses has published articles in anthologies, edited volumes, and a range of scholarly journals. Among her most recent books is the volume coedited with Bruno Sena Martins, entitled As Guerras de Libertação e os Sonhos Coloniais: alianças secretas, mapas imaginados (Almedina, 2013) and Epistemologías del Sur, with Boaventura de Sousa Santos (Akal, 2015). She is currently completing a book manuscript on the ‘collaborators’ and the political use of ‘treason’ in the construction of independent Mozambique.
Lia Quartapelle
graduated as an economist from the University of Pavia. In 2007, she worked for a year as an economist with the Italian Development Cooperation in Mozambique, supporting the Mozambican government under Prime Minister Luísa Diogo in setting their development policies. Quartapelle was elected Deputy in the 2013 Italian national elections. In parliament, Quartapelle serves on the Committee on Foreign and European Community Affairs, the Sub-Committee on Human Rights, the Sub-Committee on Sustainable Development, and the Sub-Committee on Africa and Global Affairs. In addition to her committee assignments, Quartapelle has been a member of the Italian delegation to the
Amy Schwartzott
received her PhD from the University of Florida in 2014. An ethnographic investigation of recyclia utilized by Mozambican artists is presented in her dissertation, Weapons and Refuse as Media: the Potent Politics of Recycling in Contemporary Mozambican Urban Arts. This research resulted in a Centre for Conflict Studies Fellowship and two Fulbright awards. Recently authored publications in international journals and volumes include Tydskrif vir Letterkunde/Journal for Literary Studies; Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture; and Representations of Reconciliation: Art and Trauma in Africa. Ms. Schwartzott currently is an Assistant Professor of Art History at North Carolina A&T State University where she is Curator of University Galleries.
Leonor Simas-Almeida
has a BA in Romance Philology and a licenciatura in Portuguese literature from the University of Lisbon, Portugal, as well as a Masters and a PhD in Comparative Literature from Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. She teaches in the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, where she also serves as Director of Graduate Studies. She has been teaching and publishing extensively in the areas of Portuguese and Lusophone African Literatures. Her more recent project, a book entitled Literatura e Emoções: a função hermenêutica dos afetos, is currently in press.
Anne Sletsjøe
is emeritus professor of Portuguese literature at the University of Oslo, Norway, where she taught Portuguese and Brazilian literature from most historical periods, as well as contemporary Lusophone African literature. Her scholarly work has paid special attention to Brazilian Modernism (PhD dissertation on Mário de Andrade´s Macunaíma), to Portuguese theatre from the sixteenth century, and to Portuguese and Brazilian narrative prose from the seventeenth century (the works of Gaspar Pires de Rebelo) and the eighteenth century (Nuno
Sandra Sousa
holds a PhD in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies from Brown University. Currently, she is Assistant Professor in the Modern Languages and Literatures Department at the University of Central Florida, where she teaches Portuguese language, Lusophone and Latin American Studies. Her research interests include colonialism and post-colonialism; Portuguese colonial literature; race relations in Mozambique; war, dictatorship and violence in contemporary Portuguese and Luso-African literature; feminine writing in Portuguese, Brazilian and African literature. She is the author of Ficções do Outro: Império, Raça e Subjectividade no Moçambique Colonial (Esfera do Caos, 2015) and has co-edited Visitas a João Paulo Borges Coelho. Leituras, Diálogos e Futuros (Colibri, 2017).