Sub Faculty members are associated with the Centre for the Study of the Cantigas de Santa Maria and the Research Centre for Romance Linguistics.
Current and recent topics of graduate dissertations include:
- Diogo de Teive's Epithalamium
- The Myth of Antigone in Portuguese Drama
- Fernando Pessoa and Oscar Wilde
- Queer Theory and the poetry of Al Berto
- Machado de Assis: from Serial to Book
- The Poetry of João Cabral de Melo Neto
Seminars and Colloquia
The Portuguese Graduate seminar meets at least four times each term, to hear papers by invited speakers and members of the Sub-Faculty. Graduate students are encouraged to present their research to this seminar.
The Sub-Faculty regularly organises colloquia on topics in Portuguese and Brazilian Literature and Culture. Recent events include Journeys of (Self)Discovery in Brazilian Cinema, a one-day conference on Brazilian road movies and travel narratives, organised by Sara Brandellero in 2007, From Renaissance to Post-Modernism: Rewritings of Myths in Britain and Portugal, organised by graduate students Inês Alves Mendes and Catarina Fouto in 2008, and Negotiating Power in the Literature of the Iberian Inquisitions: Courts, Crowns, and Creeds, organised by Catarina Fouto and Tyler Fisher in 2010. The sub-faculties of Spanish and Portuguese jointly organised the 2009 annual conference of WISPS (Women in Spanish and Portuguese Studies) in Lady Margaret Hall.
The Instituto Camões Portuguese Language Centre organises regular workshops and symposia on Portuguese history, politics, and current affairs, as well as sponsoring plays, concerts and poetry readings. The proceedings of a 2006 conference on The Treaty of Windsor (1386) and 620 years of Anglo-Portuguese Relations are published on the Faculty website.
Graduate students are encouraged to join the Association of British and Irish Lusitanists (ABIL) which holds biennial coinferences. The most recent ABIL conference was in Maynooth, Ireland, in September 2009.