Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes: roundtable series I. Infrastructures + Labour + War

Since 2019, the Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes International Congresses (CPCL) have been critical forums in enquiring about the entanglements between Architecture and Portuguese colonialism. While built works have often been the focus of Architectural history, multiple agents and agendas remain to be grasped. This first Roundtable on Infrastructures + Labour + War aims to question the role of still overlooked actors and agencies on different occupation strategies during late Portuguese colonialism. The debate will bring together the teams from the research projects ArchWar, funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), and ArchLabour, funded by the European Research Council (ERC), both based at Dinâmia’CET-ISCTE, along with invited consultants and scholars.

The morning session will feature the launch of the special issue “Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes: Architecture, Cities and Infrastructures” (no. 39) of the journal Africana Studia (ed. CEAUP). The volume brings together a set of articles selected from the first edition of the CPCL Congresses, held in Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon. The session will be moderated by Ana Silva Fernandes (University of Porto), editor of this issue and Karina Ramos (CEAUP) member of the Journal editorial team and it will be participated by the authors, either in person or remotely.

In the afternoon, Cristiana Bastos (University of Lisbon), Peter Scriver (University of Adelaide), and Johan Lagae (University of Ghent) will share their perspectives on unskilled labour, building yards and colonial public works, crossing different inter-imperial experiences and setting forward new avenues for research. Ana Vaz Milheiro (ISCTE-IUL), the Principal Investigator of ArchWar and ArchLabour projects, will chair the debate.

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