CISH Visiting Research Fellows
Cynthia Campos
Carol Leonardi
Roseanna Martins
Maria Sapignoli
Cynthia Campos
Cynthia Campos is a historian, senior lecturer in Human
Science Interdisciplinary PhD Programme in Federal
University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Southern Brazil;
and also a researcher in the group History and political
Languages of CNPq (Brazilian Research Council) and
UNICAMP (State University of Campinas, São Paulo).
She also worked for several years in the Department of History and in the History Post Graduate Programme in the UFSC. She has written articles in the area of Brazilian History, and is seeking to maintain a dialogue with Cultural History and Political History. Some of these articles are about nationalisms, diversity and identity in South Brazil; prohibition of foreign language in the 30s and 40s; the interventions of the State in the foreign Schools and the attempts of homogenization of immigrants places in Brazil. She has also explored the young German immigrant population in Southern Brazil and the way this group reacted to the Nationalization campaign of the 1930s and 40s; a campaign which sought to eliminate German culture and language from Brazil raising many issues of identity for the German migrants and their descendants.
She has a Master’s in History from PUC in São Paulo and a PhD from UNICAMP, Brazil. She did part of her PhD in Germany, in the Latin America Centre at Free University of Berlin (FU-Berlin). She has done research in several German archives and worked with the theme ethno-linguistic movements in southern Brazilian cities. She also did Post-Doctoral studies in Department of History at University of Essex, UK between 2006 and 2008, and since then she has become a Visiting Fellow in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities (CISH), and Latin America Studies at Essex.
She is now writing her third book about young people’s movements in the sixties and seventies. This current research is about the question of identity amongst young people in inner cities. She began by observing how historians, sociologists and psychologists have approached the subject of young people in the 60s and 70s and in her own research she has been looking at young people’s reality, including violence, and the way in which they express their identities through various cultural means in the sixties and seventies. Her main focus has been the cities of São Paulo and London, through which she has been able to compare the situation in Brazil and England. She is particularly interested in how young people maintain a sense of identity in the face of changes in society, and also in the theme of “otherness” in relation to immigrant populations. It means an investigation on how young migrants face significant challenges when it comes to finding and expressing their own identity.
Cynthia’s first book was published in 2006, and considered the politics of language in 30s and 40s, focusing on what happened in Brazilian private schools and students (who mainly spoke German) when this government banned the German Language in South Brazil. The second book, published in 2008 examined the welfare State in Vargas Government in Brazil, and the state philanthropy focusing on young people.
Carol Leonardi - (British Academy)
Reindeer Games and Racing Reindeer - Culture, History and New Challenges
Reindeer herding is a traditional way of life to the
indigenous population of Lapland. This project will
focus on the culture and historical aspects of an
important part of this lifestyle - reindeer racing and
the Reindeer Games. The project will examine the
cultural knowledge, the skills and the relationship
between the racer and the reindeer as well as the
positive
effect
racing has had on tourism. The study is also interested
in examining the new challenges that the reindeer
herding community faces as the next generation is
exposed to wider career choices and life experiences
that are distant from the traditional way of life. This
research aims to examine the reindeer races, the
cultural history of race reindeer and herding
competitions and the importance of this culture in
Lapland, including today's challenges. There is little
research literature in this area, which opens
opportunities for various researches. However, the
project refers to the work of Harris (2002) and Niemelä
(2002) on racing reindeer and reindeer races.
The Reindeer Racing Cup is scheduled in February and March annually in Northern Lapland. This sport is not equivalent to horse racing as the reindeers are not bred and intensively trained over long periods. The Kiiminiki-Kollaja and Kaldoaivi herding communities welcomes this research as the reindeer racing techniques and traditions will be officially documented and conserved for the community and a wider audience. The reindeer racing organisations are interested in presenting reindeer racing to the international community and perceive the United Kingdom as a country that has a special relationship with Finland. This is particular emphasised with the Santa Claus industry that caters for many UK citizens in the region every year. As more interest has been focused on reindeer racing in the tourist media more recently, the organisations are very keen to develop the World Reindeer Racing Cup, which will attract more researchers and tourists from the UK to this region of Finland, therefore initiating new businesses and collaborations in both countries.
Roseanna Martins -
From a ‘decolonial’ perspective in the urban space: Brazilian hip-hop and the self-defining practices
Dr. Rosana Martins. Social scientist, graduated at
University of São Paulo - USP. PhD and MSc at ECA/USP.
Books published: Hip-Hop. O estilo que ninguém segura (Esetec,
2006); Admirável Mundo MTV Brasil (Saraiva, 2006);
Direitos Humanos Segurança Pública & Comunicação (Acadepol,
2007). She is currently a post-Phd and CIMJ researcher –
Media and Journalism Investigation Centre, Social
Science College, University Nova of Lisbon, and
postdoctoral fellow with CISH.
On a global scale, the rap has been placing itself within an affirmative, reflective and narrative discourse (lyrical and musical) of its own representation, experiences and convictions. This turns it into an accessible combination of intensive practice of identity. It is seeing as one of the auto-definition and auto-maintenance strategic cultural elements, a certain ideological self-defining subsistence about the relation that an individual establishes with his/her world, or even, the way of his/her existence in the world.
The poetic-musical concept of rap in Brazil – as one of the main artistic and cultural movement’s mainstays, the hip-hop (integrated practices including dance, music and visual art), has been making great efforts on attempt to denounce and find solutions to factors that tend to prevent the pretension of progress in this country such as poverty, urban violence, police violence, racial discrimination, Afro-Brazilian self-stem retrieve, unemployment high rates, discrepancy in income distribution, use of drugs, failure in the educational system, slaughter among others.
From this premise, the purpose of this seminar is to approach the construction of the rap produced in São Paulo-Brazil (birthplace of the hip hop culture in Brazil), as an artistic project of resistance against the hierarchical system of power and prestige, as a musical component integrated in the global flow of products, ideas, styles, or, while cultural and consumable language. Therefore, a reconstruction of the system of symbolic significations that the message produces is proposed, characterised by the capacity of critical reflection towards social order.
Communication and its own production ways, rotation and consumerism of these symbolic goodies have acted in a determinant way as moderators in the construction of identities, of new combined forms, new “glocais” forms of citizenships. It is discussed in this seminar, the political-theoretical contribution of Cultural Studies and its effect over the contemporary cultural dimension – a perspective that emphasises the human activity, the active culture production, rather than its passive consumption.
Maria Sapignoli
Maria Sapignoli is an Italian anthropologist who
recently completed a doctoral dissertation at Essex
University on indigenous peoples, identity, and the
politics of indigenous organizations,
with particular
reference to the San and Bakgalagadi of the Central
Kalahari, Botswana. Her doctoral dissertation was
entitled Local Power through Globalised Indigenous
Identities: The San, the State, and the International
Community. She has carried out fieldwork in Southern
Africa and in the United Nations. Her research and
background is highly interdisciplinary, having been
trained and carried out work in anthropology,
ethnography, sociology, philosophy, history,
international development, human rights and
cross-cultural indigenous peoples’ studies.
Maria’s present research and professional plans include carrying out a comparative analysis of indigenous peoples’ organizations and movements in Africa, working on health and well-being of indigenous and other peoples, and turning her doctoral dissertation into a book. She is conducting research on the social, nutritional, and health impacts of resettlement, the effects of extractive industries such as mining, social impact assessments of globalization and ways to promote social and environmental sustainability. She is seeking grant support for her work, and is publishing her findings in journals, book chapters, and books. Currently she is working on an edited volume that will be published in Italian: Indigenous peoples in Africa: Global, National, and Local Articulations (Unicopli, Milano).