Bio notes

Speakers

Teresa Cruz e Silva, a Mozambican national, is a retired Full Professor at Eduardo Mondlane University, where she remains affiliated as a collaborator of the university’s Centre for African Studies. With research focused on the field of Social History, she developed her academic career at UEM from 1976 onwards as a lecturer, researcher, and university administrator. She has served as a visiting professor at several universities and is a member of various international journal editorial boards. She was a member of the Executive Committee and President of CODESRIA, of which she is now a life member, and is also a corresponding foreign member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences.

Jean-Michel Mabeko-Tali is a specialist in African history. Since 2002, he has been Professor at Howard University, having previously taught at Agostinho Neto University and served as Visiting Professor and Research Fellow at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme. He has also held diplomatic positions and participated in UNESCO projects dedicated to the teaching of African history. He serves on several committees, including UNESCO’s Scientific Committee for the Pedagogical Use of the General History of Africa.
He is the author of several landmark works, including Barbares et Citoyens – L’Identité Nationale à l’Épreuve des Transitions Africaines (L'Harmattan, 2005), Guerrilhas e lutas sociais: O MPLA perante si próprio, 1960–1977: Ensaio de História Política (Mercado das Letras, 2018 and 2019), and Rótulos Atribuídos, Rótulos Assumidos. Memórias e Identidades Políticas em Angola, da Luta Armada ao 27 de Maio de 1977 (1960–1977) (Guerra e Paz Editora, 2023). He is also the author of works of fiction, notably L'Exil et l'Interdit (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2001), Le Musée de la Honte (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2003), and Tales From the Great Marsh (London/New York: Austin Macauley Publishers, 2023).

Benedito Machava is a historian of colonial and post-colonial Africa and Assistant Professor at Yale University. Raised and educated in Mozambique, he holds a doctorate from University of Michigan. His research focuses on liberation struggles, decolonisation, nation-building, socialism, and socialist experiences in Africa. His most recent publication, The Morality of Revolution: Reeducation Camps and the Carceral Regime in Socialist Mozambique, 1974–1990 (Ohio University Press, 2024), examines the politics of public morality, punishment, and citizenship in post-independence Mozambique. His research has been funded by the Social Science Research Council, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, among others. Prior to his current position, Machava held a Cotsen-Link Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Princeton University Society of Fellows (2018–2020) and taught History at Eduardo Mondlane University.

Moderators

Celso Fernando Braga Rosa is originally from Angola, an anthropologist by training, a writer by passion, and a doctoral student on the Post-colonialisms and Global Citizenship programme at CES/FEUC, with a thesis on ethnographic collections from the former Portuguese colonies in Africa held by the Science Museum of the University of Coimbra.

Jessemusse Cacinda is a Mozambican writer. He holds a degree in Philosophy from the Pedagogical University, a Master's in Sociology from Eduardo Mondlane University, and a postgraduate qualification in Project Management from the Higher Institute of Management, Administration and Education in Maputo. He is currently a doctoral candidate on the Post-colonialisms and Global Citizenship Programme at CES/FEUC. He is a researcher on the project "Revolutionary Pedagogies: History of Education Projects in Angola and Mozambique (1960–1980)", underway at CES-UC, and an FCT grant holder. He is also co-founder of the book publisher Ethale Publishing. He is the author of Kwashala Blues (novella, 2023) and Made in Nampula ou jazz do oriente (short stories, 2026).

Joana Simões Piedade works in education, cultural mediation, and research, with a focus on human rights, history, memory, museums, art, and citizenship. A Law graduate, she worked as a journalist in Portugal and Angola and holds a Master's in Migrations, Inter-Ethnicities and Transnationalism from NOVA FCSH. She is a doctoral candidate in Post-colonialisms and Global Citizenship at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, where she researches memory policies in education; pedagogical relationships between schools and museums; and young people's engagement with the history, memory, and legacies of colonialism, dictatorship, and the April Revolution.

Margarida Calafate Ribeiro, who holds a doctorate from King's College London, is a Principal Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra; holder of the Eduardo Lourenço Chair at the University of Bologna (with R. Vecchi); Research Fellow at the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages at the University of Oxford; and Corresponding Member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences. Her pioneering studies in Portugal on the legacies of the Colonial War were expanded through projects on colonial legacies in Europe, MEMOIRS – Children of Empires and European Postmemories (European Research Council), which resulted in numerous publications, the exhibition Europa Oxalá (curated by A. Pinto Ribeiro, Aimé Mpane, and Katia Kameli), and other cultural outputs. Among her many publications, particular note should be given to her single-authored books Uma História de Regressos: Império Guerra Colonial e Pós-Colonialismos (2004, 2024), África no feminino: mulheres portuguesas e Guerra Colonial (2007, 2024), and Europa Transfigurada – heranças coloniais e restituição (2025); the co-editing of 14 books with Portuguese and international colleagues; and her most recent co-authored works, Des-cobrir a Europa – filhos de impérios e pós-memórias europeias (with Fátima da Cruz Rodrigues, 2022) and Eduardo Lourenço – Uma geopolítica do pensamento (with Roberto Vecchi, 2023).

Marisa Ramos Gonçalves is a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, appointed under the Scientific Employment Stimulus Programme (CEEC-IND) of the FCT, and a member of the research strand "Europe and the Global South: Heritages and Dialogues". She holds a doctorate from the Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts at the University of Wollongong (Australia) in the field of history and human rights. Between 2019 and 2025 she taught on the Post-colonialisms and Global Citizenship Doctoral Programme at CES/FEUC. She is currently leading the research project (CEEC-IND) "Transnational Histories of Solidarity in the South – Researching 'Other' Knowledges and Struggles for Rights across the Indian Ocean", funded by the FCT. From 2019 to 2020, she held a Marie Skłodowska-Curie/Widening EU postdoctoral fellowship with the project EDULIBERA | "Education as a Tool for Liberation in Mozambique and Timor-Leste – Histories of Solidarity and Contemporary Reflections". She is a member of the International Advisory Board of the National Chega! Centre (CNC), Timor-Leste's Institute of Memory. Her research interests are interdisciplinary in nature, centring on history and memory, human rights and reconciliation, knowledge systems, and social justice movements in the Global South, particularly in Timor-Leste, the Asia-Pacific region, and Mozambique. She has published on: memory, history, and colonial violence; generations in Timor-Leste; human rights, justice, and reconciliation; street arts; and immigration.