ANA MARTINS
I am a feminist researcher and Senior Lecturer in Portuguese at the University of Exeter. I specialise in Lusophone (i.e., Portuguese-speaking) women's writing. I have an MA and a PhD in Literature, both awarded by the University of Manchester in the UK. The majority of my research interests lie in postcolonial, transnational, and memory studies in Lusophone contexts, with a particular emphasis on Portugal’s relationship with Lusophone Africa and Brazil, as well as dominant French and Anglo-American theory centres of postcolonial and feminist thought. I was born in 1979 in Castelo Branco, Portugal. I have two kids and a passion for writing.
(she, her)
Project
Women of the Brown Atlantic
In 2017 I was awarded the AHRC Early Career Leadership Fellows grant for research on mobility and memory in the Brown (i.e. Lusophone) Atlantic with the project "Women of the Brown Atlantic: Real and Imaginary Passages in Portuguese 1711-2011". This is a continuation of the AHRC-funded project, "Consuming Authenticities: Time, Place and the Past in Construction of 'Authentic' Foods and Drinks," which won a Care for the Future Early Career Developmental Award in November 2014. Click on the image below to visit the project website.
Book
Magic Stones and Flying Snakes
This book is the first to identify an important theoretical overlap between Anglo-Saxon and Lusophone postcolonial theories: the systematic neglect of gender and sexual variables in the analysis of the marketing of cultural difference in the post colonial era. Drawing on the theoretical work of Graham Huggan and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, the author of this study discusses the political significance of this neglect by focusing on the asymmetrical positions occupied by two widely acclaimed Lusophone women writers, Paulina Chiziane of Mozambique andLídia Jorge of Portugal. The book asks how these two contemporary writers deal with master narratives such as Lusofonia, exoticism, capitalism and post colonialism in their novels, and examines the implications of placing gender and sexual difference at the heart of the ‘postcolonial exotic’.
Teaching
As a lecturer, I inspire my students to think for themselves and to find their individual voices as consumers and producers of culture. I aim to strike a balance between technical competency, ethics, and care, training students to reflect not only on how and what they know, but also on how they care for the Self, the Other and the Planet. I particularly enjoy small group coaching and blended learning.
Creative Writing
I am a novice creative writer, with a couple of short-stories up my sleeve. Click here to access my opinion pieces and stories.
