Vita

João Figueiredo has a PhD in High Studies in History (Empire, politics, and post-colonialism) from the University of Coimbra (2016), a post-graduate diploma in Human Rights from the Faculty of Law of the University of Coimbra (2006), and a BA Hons in Anthropology from the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the University of Coimbra (2005).

His work focuses on Portuguese colonialism in Angola during the long 19th century from a historical and anthropological perspective. He has investigated the interactions between the Portuguese administration and local normative systems, especially the role that the materiality of writing and ethnographic objects played in those entanglements. He has taught and acted as a consultant at the University Jean Piaget Luanda (Angola, 2009) and worked as an anthropologist for the Lamego municipality (2016 - 2018). He has also translated to Portuguese a monograph about Mozambique (2018), and collaborated with the Educational Service of the Douro Museum (2017 - 2019). As an anti-racist scholar and activist, he has collaborated with the NGOs Djass – Association of Afrodescendents and SOS Racismo, contributing to the organization of events concerning the history of enslavement and dependency, critical museology, and the restitution of African objects and human remains. He is a member of the scientific comittee of the Memorial to the Enslaved of Lisbon.

He has presented his research findings at several international conferences and seminars, most recently at the seminar series ‘Slavery, Memory, and African Diasporas’ Howard University (2021); ‘Honors in Curatorship‘, University of Cape Town (2020); and the 63nd Meeting of the African Studies Association, USA (2020). He has written several book chapters and peer-reviewed articles for journals such as South African Historical Journal (H Index 16), Cadernos de Estudos Africanos (H Index 3) or Social Sciences and Missions (H Index 4). Currently he is working on his first monograph and editing a collective volume as major outputs of the project ‘LEGALPL: Legal Pluralism in the Portuguese Empire (18th-20th centuries)‘, funded by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (2019-2022).