ANDREW JOÃO CARVALHO NUNES (b. 1986)
BA, MRes, PhD.

Andrew is an interdisciplinary scholar of culture, based in the United Kingdom. Working in cultural studies, frequently at the intersection of postcolonial studies, critical heritage studies, memory and social movement studies, he mainly employs qualitative methods to reach answers to contemporary societal issues and trends in Portugal - at times extending this agenda to Brazil and the rest of the Portuguese-speaking world. As such, within Lusophone contexts, yet usually focused on Portugal, Andrew's research interests include: examinations of authoritarian legacies (the Portuguese Estado Novo, 1933-1974) and the social and cultural legacies of colonialism - difficult and contested ‘sites of memory’, such as monuments and places (museums, expos, streets, squares, and parks) provocative in their commemorations of (hi)stories tied to (Portuguese) imperialism - and its exploits. In addition: visual (non-)art, theatre, cinema (and essay films), literature, music, and - where present - their associated movements (avant-garde, counter-cultural groups, and subcultures) from in Lusophone geographies. In these ways, Andrew's research interests cross the following general areas:

• Collective and cultural memory (memory culture).

• Public history and (counter-)narratives of Portuguese exploration (Os Descobrimentos), encounters, expansion (colonialism), and conflict.

• Portuguese nationalism and national identity.

• Portuguese (and Luso-Afro-Brazilian) heritage and material culture.

• Cultural production and cultural responses in Portugal (and Brazil).

As a teacher, Andrew has led undergraduate seminars on pertinent contemporary issues, ranging from the current state of museums and national heritage to debates on culture and activism. More recently, guiding students through select literary, cultural and socio-political processes from across the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking worlds.

This section features various (qualified-professional and student) published and unpublished articles, essays, dissertations, and theses by Andrew.

 
IBERIA – SPAIN :

2014: The Nation as an Imagined Community in light of Benito Pérez Galdós’s, Trafalgar.

2014: The Function of Sculpture Amongst Religious Reformation in the Golden Age of the Spanish Empire.

2015: Critical Review of Susan Verdi Webster’s Art and Ritual in Golden Age Spain: Sevillian Confraternities and the Processional Sculpture of Holy Week.

2015: The Conceptualisation and Visual Portrayal of African Slaves in Imperial Spain.

2017: A Brief Critical Review of Foucault’s ‘Las Meninas’ Chapter in The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences.

2017: An Exploration of the Ways in Which the Visual Form is Deployed as an Imperial Tool of Repression and Domination in the Spanish Golden Age.

 
IBERIA – PORTUGAL :

2014: Fado Under Salazar’s Estado Novo: A Brief Examination of the Salazarist Regime’s Impact on Portugal’s Urban Song and its Greatest Star.

2015: An Annotated Bibliography on Some Works Concerning Fernando Pessoa.

2015: Sebastianismo.

2015: Um Resumo de um Capítulo Sobre no Expedições de Pedro Cabral e Outras Explorações Marítimas Portuguesa.

2016: The Ideal Image of Portugal and of the Portuguese People Put Forward by Portuguese Nationalism.

2016: The Impact of the Long Authoritarian Regime of the Estado Novo on Portuguese Poetry.

2016: Representations of Gender, Class and National Culture in João Canijo’s Ganhar a Vida, and Ruben Alves’ A Gaiola Dourada.

2016: Revisão do Filme Amalia, Dirigido por Carlos Coelho da Silva.

2017: Critical Review of Notas de Campo by Catarina Botelho.

2017: The Portuguese Austerity Crisis: An Opportunity to Revisit the Memories of Portuguese Protest and the Carnation Revolution in light of Joana Craveiro’s, ‘A Live/Living Museum of Small Forgotten and Unwanted Memories’.

2018: Contemporary Portuguese Representations of Mid-Twentieth Century Rock ‘n’ Roll and Americana (Sub)Culture.*

2019: The Return of Dom Sebastião?

2021: Portugal Started 2021 in National Mourning.

2023: Reasserting Portuguese Influence in India? The Statue to Cristiano Ronaldo as Cultural Neocolonialism.

2023: Book Review: Rose Macaulay, They Went to Portugal (London: Daunt Books, 2023).

2024: The Lusíadas as a Historical Document: Extracting Portugal, the Portuguese, Love and Prophecy from the Epic Poem.

2025 [2024]: Book Review: Edward Wilson-Lee, A History of Water: Being an Account of a Murder, an Epic and Two Visions of Global History (London: William Collins, 2022).

2025: Decolonising Difficult Heritage Through Political Graffiti: (Re)Interpreting the Commemoration of Pedro Álvares Cabral in Santarém, Portugal.

2025: Contesting Sites of Colonial Memory: The Relationships Between Interventions, Monuments, and Places in Portugal (2017–2020).

LATIN AMERICA – BRAZIL :

2014: Discussão Sobre Aécio Neves para as Eleições Presidenciais Brasileiras 2014.

2016: Racismo no Brasil.

2016: A Narrativa de Rodrigo em A Hora da Estrela por Clarice Lispector.

2016: Discussing: ‘the performance of brasilidade encompasses the understanding of performance as culture in action’ (Bishop-Sanchez, K., 2015, p. 32).

2016: Aesthetics of Garbage: A Critical Vantage Point in Brazilian Art and Film of Brazilian Society.

2017: An Analysis of the Cultural Context in Which the Femme Fatale Emerges in light of Carlos Diegues’ Xica da Silva.

2017: Performance as Subversion of Normative Expectations of Race, Gender, Sexuality and Social Class Within a Brazilian Context.

2017: Adesão Feminino no Espaço Colonial: Explorando o Conceito de Libertação Feminina e Ascensão Social no Representações Feminina no Cinema e Literatura.

2018: In What Ways Are Maps Embedded in a History They Help Construct in Latin America?

2020: Pride In: Samuel de Saboia, a ‘Black Queer Body’.

2020: Brazil, Bolsonaro and Covid Through the Rap Music of MV Bill.

2020: In Conversation with Carlo Alexandre: Capoeira, Music, Resistance and Change.

 
LATIN AMERICA – ARGENTINA :

2015: Critical Review of Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas’ La Hora de los Hornos.

OTHER :

2013: The Self-Interest of Political Parties was Mainly Responsible for the Changes in Parliamentary Representation in Britain Between 1830 and 1928.

2013: An Analysis of an Extract of Dramatic Text: William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing – Act 1, Scene 3.

2013: An Analysis of Poetry: Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’.

2013: An Analysis of a Short Story: Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘The Body Snatcher’.

2014: Drama and Dislocation in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

2014: To What Extent Was the Use of Terror in Soviet Russia Applied to Aid the Rise of Stalin in Establishing and Consolidating the Stalinist Regime.

2014: An Examination of Anglo-Spanish Relations and Identity Concerning Gibraltar and the 1967 Referendum.

2014: Within an Endemic Culture of Striving for Success and Ruthless Individualism, the Working Classes are Deemed to Fail Educationally because of Their Own Faults. Is Working Class Culture to Blame for Working Class Educational Failure?

2014: An Exploration of the Modern Perceptions of Smoking.

2014: Marxist and Psychoanalytical Critical Approaches on Marriage and the Passions of Jane Eyre in Jane Eyre, and Antoinette Cosway in Wide Sargasso Sea.

2014: The Marxist Perspective on the Family.

2014: The Freudian Concept of the Unconscious and its Aid in Understanding Literary Texts Using Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis.

2015: An Account of Language that Underpins Post-Structuralist Thinking.

2015: The Communist Manifesto Discussed Both in a Political and Literary Perspective.

2015: The Extent That Frantz Fanon is Successful in Giving a Voice to the Colonised Subject in his Text Black Skin, White Masks.

2016: How and Why Wim Wenders’ The American Friend Explores the Relationship Between German and American Cultures.

2016: The Satirical Function and the Epistolary Form of Defamiliarisation in Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes.

2017: Portuguese Translation: Tony Cheng’s BBC News Article, ‘O Sangue Colonial de Macau está a Drenar’.

2018: The Social Role of the Writer, Artist, Author in the Texts by André Breton, Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault.

2020: Don’t Stop the Music: How Music is Adapting to the Coronavirus Lockdown.

2020: ILAS and the Implications for Latin American Studies.

2021: Kids of Immigrants: The Negotiation of Internal and External Dual National Identities.

NOTES :

* This was a Master of Research dissertation that was later expanded and published in 2019 as a monograph titled, Luso-Retro: Past and Present Portuguese Representations of Mid-Twentieth Century Rock ‘n’ Roll and Americana Subculture. It was updated as a revised edition for Cambridge Scholars Publishing (Newcastle), retitled Portuguese Representations of 1950s American Rock 'n' Roll (Sub)Culture: Luso-Retro.

This section features various (qualified-professional and student) presentations given by Andrew.

 
IBEIRA – SPAIN :

2014 - June: ‘An Examination of Anglo-Spanish Relations and Identity Concerning Gibraltar and the 1967 Referendum’, Cambridge Regional College.

2016 - 15 December: ‘Still Life: Norman Bryson’s Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting in the Context of the Spanish Empire’, Birkbeck College, University of London.

 
IBEIRA – PORTUGAL :

2015 - 7 December: ‘In What Ways do the Songs That Represented Portugal in the Eurovision Song Contest Help Understand Changes in Portuguese Society From 1960-1980s’, Birkbeck College, University of London.

2015 - 8 December: ‘The Role of the Family in Salazarist Ideology’, Birkbeck College, University of London.

2018 - 19 June: ‘Contemporary Portuguese Representations of Mid-Twentieth Century Rock ‘n’ Roll and Americana Subculture’, Birkbeck College, University of London.

2019 - 12 June: ‘The Legacy of Portuguese Colonialism Through its “Sites of Memory”’, Modern Languages Postgraduate Research Workshop, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, King's College London.

2022 - 20 April: ‘Decolonising Statues: Unmaking a Celebratory Discourse of Portuguese Imperialism and Colonialism in the Urban Public Space’, Heritage and Colonialism Discussion Group, Cambridge Heritage Research Centre, University of Cambridge.

2022 - 20 May: ‘Public Memory Crises? Contesting Portuguese Imperial-Colonial Memory Sites’, Confronting Crisis: Arts & Humanities Perspectives on a Changing World, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, King's College London.

2025 - 21 May: ‘The Politics of Historical Symbols in Portugal’, Challenging Times, The School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music, University of Birmingham.

2025 - 9 September: ‘Historical Symbols and Political Anxieties: The Portuguese Case’, Public History in an Age of Anxiety, Annual Conference of the Centre for Public History, Queen’s University Belfast.

 
LATIN AMERICA – BRAZIL :

2014 - March: ‘Capoeira: Fight – Dance – Game’, Cambridge Regional College.

2015 - 13 February: ‘Capoeira na Europa’, (Audio Recording) Birkbeck College, University of London.

2015 - June: ‘Processo de Construção do Berimbau’, Birkbeck College, University of London.

 
OTHER :

2013 - November: ‘A Brief Overview of the Key Events and Legislation in British Democracy 1830-1928’, Cambridge Regional College.

2014 - March: ‘An Exploration of the Modern Perceptions of Smoking’, Cambridge Regional College.

2017 - 9 May: ‘A Exploração da Escravatura e o Colonialismo no Livro Nação Crioula’, (w/ Erika Almeida, Raquel Tasca, Samantha Ornelas) Birkbeck College, University of London.