Rui Cidra wins Institutional CEEC

Researcher Rui Cidra has just taken up the position of Principal Investigator at CEIS20, following a call for applications for an institutional research position at the Centre under the Institutional Call for Scientific Employment Stimulus. Rui Cidra is an anthropologist who works on music, sound and expressive culture, bringing together cultural anthropology, history, ethnomusicology, post-colonial studies and cultural studies to respond to the challenges posed by the complexity and multidimensionality of his research objects. His research interests include the colonial and post-colonial histories of expressive practices formed in former Portuguese colonial territories, especially Cape Verde, and which spread throughout the post-colonial diasporas, especially Portugal. He examines how these practices have historically been mobilised to mark boundaries of race, gender, and social class; how they have been implicated in nation-building processes; how they are produced worldwide; and how they draw on and transform shared social, cultural, moral and political universes.

His work plan is in line with the transdisciplinary profile of the Centre. Specifically, he will continue his main line of research on the expressive practices of African communities and their descendants in the diaspora, and undertake further investigation on voice, language, citizenship and the production of the urban space. Together with José António Oliveira Martins and Leonor Losa, he will coordinate an integrated research project on the Song of Coimbra. These two projects are part of the two of the Centre’s interdisciplinary axes: Inequality, Borders and Mobilities, and Democracy, the Present and the Memory of Dictatorship. This work will also make it possible to respond to one of the scientific tasks of the Institutional Call for Scientific Employment Stimulus (CEEC), which is to promote reflection around the interdisciplinary areas transversal to the Centre’s research. In addition to research, he will coordinate the Societies and Cultures curricular unit of the Contemporary Studies PhD with Anabela Fernandes, which will also allow for dialogue with students and young researchers. Finally, together with Luís Trindade, he will be involved in the editing of the journal “Estudos do Século XX”, which publishes the research results of the “Pensar o Século XX” colloquium.

His work plan aims to reconcile interdisciplinarity with theory in the field of humanities, arts and social sciences, which can contribute to the production of new scientific knowledge and to a tangible impact on the lives of the communities on which the research is focused by committing to the goals of eradicating inequality, poverty and social injustice.

The integrated researcher belongs to Group 4 – Artistic Currents and Intellectual Movements.