AMI-AFRO Laboratory, Theatre of the Oppressed Group – Lisbon (Grupo Teatro do Oprimido de Lisboa GTO-LX). GTO LX is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation committed to encouraging the active and conscious participation of citizens in building society. Since 2004, it has worked directly with disadvantaged and discriminated populations, forming several community groups of Theatre Forum, which create performances from real situations they have experienced and that are later presented to the community. Amongst those groups is the Ami-Afro Laboratory, which has developed several performances focusing on key issues related to migration, racism, national identity and citizenship.
Anabela Rodrigues is a Curinga and co-coordinator of the Association Theatre of the Oppressed Group in Lisbon (GTO-LX) and one of the founding members of the Laboratory AMI-AFRO, an innovative aesthetic experience that engages with the specificity of oppression faced by Afro-descendants; silenced topics such as racial, sex and class discrimination are approached from an artistic approach. Anabela is a member of ‘Together’ a European network of the Theatre of the Oppressed (including groups from Portugal, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Croatia and the United Kingdom); she has been coordinator of activities at the Cultural Association Moinho da Juventude (1997-2008) and the Francis Obikwelu Foundation (2008-2009) in Lisbon. She is the descendent of immigrants, a mother, a poet and an activist.
Bruno Gonçalves is member of a Roma community and has been socio-cultural mediator for 18 years. Bruno is also mediator trainer and national delegate of the ROMED Programme (Council of Europe) and Vice-President of Letras Nómadas – Association for Research and Reinforcement of Roma Communities. From 2010 to 2012 he was a member of the Commission for Equality and against Racial Discrimination(CICDR) in Portugal. He has also been a founding member and first president of the Roma Association of Coimbra. Since 1998 he has been an activist in SOS Racismo-Portugal. He is the author of the children’s book: A História do Ciganinho Chico.
Cristina Roldão is a sociologist and researcher at CIES-IUL, and she completed her PhD in Sociology at ISCTE – IUL. In her recent work, and mainly trough the analysis of official statistics, she has been drawing a portrait of students of Afro-descendent in the Portuguese educational system, from primary to higher education, but also in other spheres of society (work, habitation and judicial system). One of the main topics of her research are the national and local processes of school segregation, understood as forms of institutional racism. She has been engaged with Afro-descendants social movements on questions related with racism, the demand for data collection regarding ethno-racial discrimination and affirmative action policies in Portugal.
Gaia Giuliani is FCT postdoctoral researcher at CES. In 2009-2010, she was Endeavour research fellowship recipient (University of Technology Sydney). She then became assistant in Political Theory and Colonial and Postcolonial Studies at the Dept. Social and Political Studies – University of Bologna, and undergraduate supervisor at the Department of Sociology – University of Cambridge (UK). Among her books, the authored Zombie, alieni e mutanti. Le paure dall’11 settembre ad oggi (2016), the co-authored Bianco e nero. Storia dell’identità razziale degli italiani with prof. Cristina Lombardi-Diop (2013) winner of the AAIS best book prize for the category 19-20th century, and the edited book Il colore della nazione (2015). She is currently working on her first monograph in English Race, Gender and Nation in Modern Italy (2018) that will be published by Palgrave Macmillan. In 2014 she has co-founded the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Race and Racisms (InteRGRace) based at the FISPPA - University of Padova. In 2016 she became member of the Editorial Board of the Italian academic journal Studi culturali; and since 2014 she has been a member of the International Advisory Board of the Australian academic journal Settler colonial studies.
Guiomar Oliveira de Sousa comes from the Gypsy community and she is an activist and a feminist. Her first contact with activism was through her endeavour as a community worker through the Choices programme (Programa Escolhas), for a year and a half. In 2015, she was awarded the Prize Gypsy Woman of the Year for her work with the Gypsy community and her role as a Gypsy woman. She has been engaged with several projects related to activism, namely: Virtual meetings with Gypsy women; The campaign We Do Not Swallow Toads, launched by SOS Racismo; Stories of Seven Gypsy Women, with the Association Ribalta Ambitção. She is currently completing a training course by the High Commissariat for Migration (ACM – Alto Comissariado para as Migrações), Youth + Leaders.
Katy P. Sian is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of York. Dr Sian completed her PhD in 2009 at the University of Leeds in the School of Sociology and Social Policy. From 2010-2012 Katy worked on the TOLERACE project (FP7) as a post-doctoral researcher in the Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies (CERS) University of Leeds. She moved to the University of Manchester in 2012 where she held a lecturing position in Sociology before taking up a Hallsworth Research Fellowship in 2013. Katy has held visiting research posts at the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI) and the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society (CSRS) at the University of Victoria, Canada. Katy is the author of, Conversations in Postcolonial Thought (2014) New York: Palgrave | Unsettling Sikh and Muslim Conflict: Mistaken Identities, Forced Conversions, and Postcolonial Formations (2013) Lanham: Lexington Books | and co-author of, Racism, Governance, and Public Policy: Beyond Human Rights (2013) London: Routledge. Her research interests include, postcolonial studies; critical race theory; inter-ethnic relations; Sikh studies; Islamophobia and the war on terror; religion and identity; migration and diaspora.
Kwame Nimako (MA, Sociology; PhD Economics, University of Amsterdam) is the founder and director of the Summer School on Black Europe based in Amsterdam since 2007. Dr Nimako was visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley (2012-2015); and at the University of Suriname (2011). He taught Race and Ethnic Relation at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. Dr. Nimako is also President of OBEE Consultancy and has consulted for several private and public institutions, including the National Institute for the Study of Dutch Slavery and its Legacy (NiNsee, Amsterdam); the Amsterdam Municipal Council and the Dutch Ministry of Home Affairs (The Hague) on urban renewal projects and ethnic minorities/immigrants policy. He is the author or co-author of some 30 books, reports and guidebooks on economic development, ethnic relations, social policy, urban renewal, and migration, including: The Dutch Atlantic: Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation (with Glenn Willemsen) (London, Pluto Press, 2011); ‘African Regional Groupings and Emerging Chinese Conglomerates’, eds. B. Hogenboom and A. E. F. Jilberto, Big Business and Economic Development: Conglomerates and Economic Groups in Developing Countries and Transition Economies under Globalization (Routledge, London, 2007); ‘Location and Social Thought in the Black: A Testimony of Africana Intellectual Tradition’, eds. S. Broeck and C. Junker, Postcoloniality, Decoloniality, Black Critique: Joints and Fissures (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2014). His latest book chapter is: ‘Lost and Found: Sovereignties and State Formations in Africa and Asia’, eds. P. A. Raposo, D Arase and S. Cornelissen, Routledge Handbook of Africa-Asia Relations (Routledge, forthcoming). Nimako is working with Stephen Small on a book entitled Public History, Museums and African Diasporic Memory in England and the Netherlands.
Mamadou Ba was born in Senegal. He is an activist and anti-racist militant, and has worked since the mid 1990s for the cause of the rights of migrants and ethnic minorities. He obtained a degree in Portuguese Language and Culture from the Cheikh Anta Diop University, Dakar; he has also a degree in Translation from the University of Lisbon. He is a founding member of the Luso-Senegalese Association, the Anti-Racist Network, the Diaspora Afrique, as well as of the Alliance of African People and of People of African Decent in Europe. From 1999 to 2012 he represented Portugal as a full-member of the Administrative Board of the European Network Against Racism -ENAR. He has been a member of the SOS Racism Movement since the 1990s as well a member of its national board. He’s also one of the coordinators of the Platform for Afro-Descendants in Portugal. He has published widely on the topic of diversity, racism and migrations.
Mario Espinoza Pino is Graduate in Philosophy, editor, activist and social researcher. His main fields of research are Marxism, Political Philosophy, Social Movements, Social Conflicts and the thought of Baruch Spinoza. He is part of the Institute for Democracy and Municipalism (Instituto DM) in Madrid. He has participated in different collective works like Spinoza Contemporáneo (Tierradenadie, 2009) – a book of which is also editor – Hacer vivir, dejar morir. Biopolítica y Capitalismo (Arbor/Catarata, 2010) – and, more recently, Constelaciones Intempestivas (Biblioteca Nueva, 2015). He is editor of two Karl Marx’s books in Spanish: Contribución a la crítica de la economía política (Minerva, 2010) and Artículos periodísticos, both texts accompanied with new introductions and critic commentaries. During 2013 and 2014 he conducted two interrelated research projects: the first about the Spanish 15M Movement (The Spanish Revolt: defying the crisis from below) and the second about Migration, Racism and Social Movements in Spain (In and Out: Stories between borders). At the moment, he is researching about State violence, racism and borders in Spain.
Marta Araújo (PhD in Sociology of Education, University of London) is a Principal Researcher at CES, where she lectures in several doctoral programmes. She is also invited lecturer at the Black Europe Summer School (International Institute for Research and Education - IIRE, Amsterdam). Marta has published internationally and is currently a member of the Editorial Board of publications on sociology, race and education in Brazil, Britain, Portugal and the United States. Her research work has focused on the (re)production and challenging of racism and Eurocentrism, addressing two complimentary lines: 1) Eurocentrism, knowledge production, history teaching, and decolonial struggles; 2) public policy, racial inequality in education, and anti-racism. She recently published the following works: ‘Race, History, and Education in Brazil and in Portugal: challenges and perspectives’, Educação & Realidade, 42, 1, 1-22, 2017 (with Amilcar A. Pereira); ‘A very prudent integration: white flight, school segregation and the depoliticization of (anti)racism’, Race, Ethnicity and Education, 19, 2, 300-323, 2016.
The Party of the Indigenous of the Republic (Parti des Indigénenes de la République) is a follow up to the ‘Appeal of the natives of the republic’ published in January 2005, and to the movement resulting from it, the MIR (Indigenous Movement of the Republic). The PIR was constituted in 2010 and is an autonomous space for all those who want to engage in the struggle against racial inequalities that confine Black people, Arabs and Muslims to a status similar to that of the indigenous peoples in the former colonies: political marginalisation, stigmatisation of our cultures and religions (in particular in the media), police brutality and racial profiling, discrimination in employment, housing, schooling, repression of immigration and of the inhabitants of the periphery. Its main objective is to build an autonomous indigenous political force capable of influencing the evolution of French society and public policies, working to build alliances that can mobilise and regroup on a decolonial basis.
Sabine Broeck teaches English-Speaking Cultures and Transnational/Transcultural Studies at the University of Bremen. Professor Broeck’s research critiques the coloniality and anti-blackness of transatlantic modernity as a social formation and culture of enslavism. She was president of the international scholarly organization Collegium for African American Research (CAAR) from 2007 to 2015, and director of the University of Bremen Institute for Postcolonial and Transcultural Studies (INPUTS) until 2015. She published two monographs, Der entkolonisierte Koerper (1988) and White Amnesia-Black Memory? American Women’s Writing and History (1999); see further publications at academia.edu. Recently she edited, with Stella Bolaki, Audre Lorde’s Transnational Legacies, University of Massachusetts Press 2015, as well as, with Jason Ambroise, Black Knowledges/Black Struggles: Essays in Critical Epistemology, Liverpool University Press 2015. She recently completed a manuscript entitled: Gender and the Abjection of Blackness, forthcoming with SUNY Press.
Silvia Rodríguez Maeso is principal researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (University of Coimbra). She is a sociologist and develops her research and teaching activities within the areas of race critical theories; (anti-)racism, public policing and law; and Eurocentrism and social theory. She is currently coordinating the research project COMBAT – “Combating racism in Portugal: an analysis of public policies and anti-discrimination law” (funded by the FCT - PTDC/IVC-SOC/1209/2014).
