Yes, I did a PhD and did not go mad. Yet.

Check out the largest database for PhDs in Europe here.

Africa for Sweden! Challenging views of Africa

Africans unite to save Norwegians from dying of frostbite. You too can donate your radiator and spread some warmth!

Portugal em tempos de crise - dossier do New York Times

Click here to have a look at New York Times' frightening portrait of some of the consequences of Portuguese austerity measures (photography + text).

Neo-imperial online Christmas shopping, anyone?

Quinto Império foi criado para todos os que gostam de se divertir e que partilham o interesse de conhecer a história, a cultura, as marcas de Ser Português. Foi desenhado para juntar miúdos (maiores de 11 anos) e graúdos, em torno de viagens épicas pelos locais e tempos que contribuíram para sermos quem somos hoje. O desafio é simples: Escolhe a tua personagem e embarca numa viagem fantástica pelos locais e acontecimentos que representam a identidade portuguesa. Cada ponto do jogo (no tabuleiro) faz menção a influências, riquezas, locais e acontecimentos que de alguma forma marcaram a história de Portugal. Em cada jogada tu decides para onde viajas; terás sempre que por à prova o teu conhecimento (respondendo a questões, que te dão ouro ou acesso às riquezas portuguesas) e as tuas capacidades estratégicas: para arrecadar ouro, trocá-lo pelas mais valiosas mercadorias e, por fim adquirir os monumentos mais emblemáticos espalhados por todo o território de Portugal, que te dão os pontos necessários para ganhares o jogo.

(thanks to Anna Klobucka for sharing this link)

Granta - The Best of Young Brazilian Novelists - in Cambridge

Waterstones Public Reading at Cambridge

15 November 2012

(Ellah Allfrey, Michel Laub, Tatiana Levy, Nick Caistor)

Granta – Best of Young Brazilian Novelists Cambridge Symposium – 15 November 2012

Cambridge Launch of Granta - Best of Young Brazilian Novelists

3-5pm | Roundtable debate (Bowett Room, Queens’ College) with Brazilian writers Tatiana Salem Levy and Michel Laub, translator Nick Caistor and Granta deputy editor Ella Allfrey. Debate led by Rachel Brown and Matt Carless

6.30 -7.30pm | Public reading at Waterstones. ‘Tatiana Salem Levy, Michel Laub and Nick Caistor in conversation with  Ella Allfrey 

ALL WELCOME!

Monocle - mantendo um olho no mundo!

More exciting news about the global Portuguese push!

Monocle Magazine dedicates its issue 57 to the Lusophone world, including an Expo on Mozambique’s capital, an African architectural gem, and a culture story on why all eyes are glued to Portuguese-language television from Brazil. (Thanks to Ian Roberts who spotted the issue!)

Launched in February 2007, Monocle is a premium media brand with magazine, web, broadcast and retail divisions. Focusing on global affairs, business, culture and design, Monocle's mission is to keep an eye on the world.

Portuguese at Cambridge presents...

"Lovely flower: Contacts between popular and classical Brazilian music through the myth of the three sad races", by Professor Marco António da Silva Ramos.

11th October 2012 

5pm 

CC43 Queens' College 

 The talk discusses the many contacts between popular and classical Brazilian music from the viewpoint of Olavo Bilac, as expressed in his sonnet "Brazilian Music" in which he defines contact as the "lovely flower of three sad races". Through the use of recordings of African-Brazilian, native Brazilian and Portuguese music, set against the production of classical composers, Professor Marco António da Silva Ramos discusses the concept of contact in Brazilian music. The speech would be of interest to scholars, musicians and music lovers alike.

Org. Dr Ioanna Sitaridou

Portuguese at Cambridge presents...

Sem Flash is a 2012 documentary (dir. Bruno Z'Graggen) that captures images of Ricardo Rangel in 2003 in Maputo, during the launch of the exhibition Iluminando Vidas. Ricardo Rangel and the Next Generation (curated by Bruno Z'Graggen and Grant Lee Neuenburg). Rangel speaks about his origins, his experiences as a photojournalist during colonialism, and his love for jazz. His voice is complemented by that of other Mozambican photographers such as Ségio Santimano and Kok Nam, and Mozambican poet and journalist Luís Carlos Patraquim.

Ricardo Achiles Rangel (1924-2009) is Mozambique's foremost photojournalist and one of the greatest African journalists of the twentieth century. Following the tradition of Magnum photographers, Rangel adopted a very critical attitude towards Portuguese colonialism in Mozambique, and was as a result a frequent target of the infamous Portuguese secret police (PIDE). After independence (1975) he contributed to building the new socialist state. As a journalist and a teacher at the Centro de Formação Fotográfica, Rangel influenced a whole generation of young photographers, setting out the basis of a photographic tradition in Mozambique. His extraordinary photographic legacy spans a period of over fifty years. His masterpiece Pão nosso de cada noite [Our nightly bread] (1959-75) documents the intense nightlife of Lourenço Marques (Maputo) and brought him international recognition in the 1990s.


FREE ADMISSION - ALL WELCOME!

Save Portuguese at Utrecht!

The Faculty of Humanities at the University of Utrecht announced that the Faculty intends to shut down its BA program in Portuguese. Effects are to be felt very soon, with possible firing of all staff members after September 2012 and a last date for enrolment of students set for September 2013. This has been sent to the national press today and appeared in one of the most respected newspapers, the NRC Handelsblad. This is being done as a reaction to imposed budget cuts. However, in the plans announced so far Portuguese is the only Department that is targeted for a full shut down. Two other BA programmes, on Arabic and on Theology will be allowed to restructure and become part of related BA Programmes. For Portuguese no such option was contemplated; neither together with Spanish, nor in terms of Latin American Studies.

SPREAD THE NEWS AND WRITE a letter of complaint addressed to:

Chair of the Board of Governance of Utrecht University
Professor Yvonne van Rooy
Bestuursgebouw
Heidelberglaan 8
3584 CS
Utrecht
Netherlands

The wisdom of Brazil

Brazilian law to make philosophy classes compulsory is the world's largest-scale attempt to bring philosophy into the public sphere. Read more here. Via Feminist Philosophers.