ABIL Officers
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President - Dr Carmen Ramos Villar (2021 - 2023)
(email: c.ramosvillar[at]sheffield.ac.uk)
Dr Ramos Villar is Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Sheffield, where she is also the Director of Portuguese Studies. At ABIL, she has served as treasurer and conference secretary, and is now president. Her research interests include how autobiographical writings, and biographical studies, portray the Portuguese migrant in the United States.
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General Secretary - Dr Maria Luísa Coelho (2021-2023)
(email: maria.desousacoelho[at]mod-langs.ox.ac.uk)
Maria Luísa Coelho is a Portuguese lecturer at the University of Oxford and she has recently completed a post-doctoral project (sponsored by FCT) on Portuguese Artists and Writers in Britain (1950-1986). She is also involved in the project Women, arts and dictatorship: Portugal, Brazil and Portuguese-speaking African countries, at University of Minho (http://ceh.ilch.uminho.pt/womanart/?author=1&lang=en). Her research sits in the field of Comparative Literature and is inherently interdisciplinary and transcultural, as it bridges the gaps between art and literature, Portuguese and English studies; within this field, she is particularly interested in a gendered and feminist approach to art production. Her recent publications include a special issue of Portuguese Studies on transnational Portuguese women writers, and the chapter “Transnational, palimpsestic journeys in the art of Bartolomeu Cid dos Santos”, in Transnational Portuguese Studies (2020). She is currently co-editing a volume on Portuguese writer Ana Luísa Amaral, and a chapter on artist Paula Rego and representations of aging women will be published soon.
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Treasurer - Dr Maria Tavares (2017-2023)
(email: m.tavares[at]qub.ac.uk)
Maria Tavares is a Lecturer in Portuguese Studies at Queen’s University, Belfast. Her research has explored the possibilities arising from thinking nationalism and national identity through gender and she is currently conducting research on the processes of construction and representations of female heroism in Mozambique. She is the author of No Country for Nonconforming Women: Feminine Conceptions of Lusophone Africa (Cambridge: Legenda, 2018). Maria is a member of ABIL and in 2017 she was elected Treasurer of the Association.
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Postgraduate Representative - Maria Inês Castro e Silva (2019-2023)
(email: M.Castro-E-Silva.1[at]warwick.ac.uk)
Maria Inês Castro e Silva is a PhD student at the University of Warwick (Department of Hispanic Studies) and a Teaching Fellow at the University of Birmingham since 2020. Her research is focused on Portuguese film, postcolonial studies, urban studies, and Portuguese popular culture. She has taught in the United Kindgom and Ireland (Queen's University Belfast, 2014-2017; National University of Ireland, Maynooth, 2016/2017; The University of Warwick, 2017-2020). Inês has been Postgraduate Representative since 2019.
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Early Career Representative - Dr Dorothée Boulanger (2017-2023)
(email: dorothee.boulanger[at]mod-langs.ox.ac.uk)
After completing her PhD on Angolan history and literature at King’s College London, she has been a teaching fellow in the History and SPLAS (Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies) departments at the same institution. Her research focuses on postcolonial Angolan literature, and the interplay between politics, history and fiction, with specific interest in masculinity and coloniality. She is currently a departmental lecturer in the Portuguese sub-faculty at the University of Oxford, and is about to start a Leverhulme early career fellowship.
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Conference Secretary - Dr Carlos Garrido Castellano (2021-2023)
(email: carlos.garridocastellano[at]ucc.ie)
Carlos Garrido Castellano is a Lecturer at University College Cork. He is co-convenor of the MA in Global Cultures and Languages and coordinator of the BA in Portuguese Studies. Currently he also acts as department’s research officer. His research examines issues of creative agency, cultural activism and cultural labour in relation to processes of decolonisation. He is the author of Beyond Representation in Contemporary Caribbean Art (Rutgers University Press, 2019), Art Activism for an Anticolonial Future (State University of New York, 2021) and Literary Fictions of the Contemporary Art System (forthcoming 2022 with Routledge).
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Portuguese & Brazilian Studies Representative at the University Council for Modern Languages (UCML) - Dr Luís Gomes (2021-2024)
(email: luis.gomes[at]glasgow.ac.uk)
Luís Gomes is Programme Director of Portuguese Studies and Instituto Camões Lecturer at the University of Glasgow. He works on Portuguese literature of the Dual Monarchy and emblems in Portuguese. Luis has recently collaborated with Madalena Gonçalves on The Portuguese Subjunctive: a Grammar Workbook (London: Routledge, 2021), editor for Portuguese of the Year's Work in Modern Language Studies (Brill), and co-editor of the book series Glasgow Emblem Studies. Luis has taught at the University of Oxford and University of Glasgow, as well as Falkirk Further Education College.
He currently represents ABIL on the University Council for Modern Languages (UCML).
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Immediate Past President - Professor Stephanie Dennison (2017 -2021)
(email: s.dennison[at]leeds.ac.uk)
Professor Stephanie Dennison holds a chair in Brazilian Studies at the University of Leeds, where she also serves as Director of the Centre for World Cinemas and Digital Cultures. Stephanie served as Luso-Brazilian representative for the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland (AHGBI) and she is a founding member of REBRAC, the European Network of Researchers working in Cultural Analysis.
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Past Officers
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Presidents
Professor Stephanie Dennison (University of Leeds) (2017 -2021)
Professor Phillip Rothwell (St Peter's College, Oxford) (2013-2017)
Dr David Frier (University of Leeds) (2013-2017)
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General Secretary
Dr Catarina Fouto (King's College - London) (2013-2021)
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Conference Secretary
Dr Fernando Beleza (University of Newcastle) (2019-2021)
Dr Raquel Ribeiro (University of Edinburgh) (2017-2019)
Dr Carmen Ramos Villar (University of Sheffield) (2015-2017)
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Treasurer
Dr Mark Sabine (University of Nottingham) (2013-2017)
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Portuguese & Brazilian Studies Representative at the University Council for Modern Languages (UCML)
Professor Hilary Owen (University of Oxford) (2019-2021)
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Postgraduate Officer
Gui Perdigão (University of Oxford) (2015-17)
Members without Portfolio
Dr Tori Holmes (Queen's University Belfast) (2013-2017)
Dr Simon Park (2017-2019)
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