My doctoral thesis, Adaptation, Dialogism and Disaffection during “O Colapso”: Angolan Cinema from 1982-1999, explores the development of Angolan cinema through the final decades of the Angolan Civil War. After an initial boom in post-independence national filmmaking, Angolan cinema entered a state of decline from the early 1980s. This project asks how Angolan directors responded to national and global ideological shifts during this period, moving away from revolutionary and Socialist Realist aesthetics towards cinematic interrogations of Angola’s socio-political hegemony at the level of content, aesthetics and form. In doing this, the thesis also suggests where an exploration of films produced during "O Colapso" might inform new readings of three feature-length films released in Angola in 2004, dubbed the "golden year" of Angolan cinema.
Before coming to Oxford for my DPhil, I completed a BA in Modern and Medieval Languages (Portuguese and Spanish) at the University of Cambridge, and a MA in Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck, University of London.
Beyond my DPhil, my research interests include contemporary Portuguese and Angolan cinema and visual culture, particularly in relation to themes of crisis, climate justice, the Anthropocene/Capitalocene, and representations of global flows of capital. Recently, this research has explored instances of ecological consciousness in Portuguese austerity cinema, examining moments of convergence between multiple crises in the work of filmmakers such as Miguel Gomes.
I am also interested in translation; in Oxford, I have worked on a number of translation projects, including the Inclusive Outreach through Translation Project at the Queen's College Translation Exchange, and the Diversity Translation Project in the MML/AMES faculties. In 2022-23, I was Coordinator for Polly Barton's Translation Residency/TORCH HCP Visiting Fellowship, "The Visible Translator".
Teaching
University of Oxford
Lectures
Paper XI – Introduction to the History and Literatures of Portuguese-Speaking Africa (Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau)
Paper XII – Latin American Cinema (Brazilian Cinema, Third Cinema)
Graduate Lecture Series (Angolan Cinema)
Language teaching
Paper IIA – Translation from Portuguese into English
Tutorials
Introduction to Film Studies
Study Skills and Academic Writing Skills
University of Cambridge
Supervisions
PG3 and PGA3 – Introduction to the Language, Literatures and Cultures of the Portuguese-speaking World (Mozambican Cinema)
Peer-reviewed articles
“‘What Else Do You Expect in a City With No Trees?’: Climate Justice, Crisis and Resistance in Ar Condicionado (2020)”, in Sustainability and Innovation, special issue of Question Journal, vol. 7, 2022, pp. 42–50
Selected conference papers
“The river weaved life: space, time and more-than-human entanglements in Revolução Industrial (2014)”, X ABIL Conference, University of Cork, 7-8th September 2023
““Animal Capital”, materiality and more-than-human agency in As Mil e uma Noites (Miguel Gomes, 2015)”, Luso-Ecologies: More-Than-Human Complexities, Agency and Resistance in the Lusophone Anthropocene, University of Oxford, 30-31st March 2023
“Adversity and Adaptation: New directions in Angolan Cinema during “O Colapso” (1989-2004)”, African Literature Association 47th Annual Conference, University of Guelph (online), 18-21st May 2022
“Whose difficulty?: Framing a Powerful Woman in Njinga: Rainha de Angola (2013)”, WISPS XXI Conference, Online, 4-6th November 2021
“The plural futures of Kiluanji Kia Henda and Edson Chagas”, Futures: Time, Certainty and the Imagination, SWW AHRC DTP Summer Festival, Online, 14-16 June 2021