RESEARCHERS
Adelaide Meira Serras is an Assistant Professor (w/ tenure) of the English Department of the Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras. As a ULICES researcher – English Culture Group – she edited Empire Building and Modernity, and translated Addison’s Cato, Catão, Uma Tragédia, introduction and notes. She co-coordinates the Science Fiction and Fantasy Project, Messengers from the Stars. She currently teaches Medieval Culture, English Culture (17th to 21st century) to undergraduate classes, and MA/PhD seminars concerning the British Empire, gender and utopia studies. She has written several papers on British culture issues: Enlightenment, the 18th-century political and ideological paradigm, the gender question, and science fiction. Now she is working on utopia and the city.
Ana Daniela Coelho is a PhD candidate with a funded project on Austen adaptations in the new millennium, under the supervision of Professors Deborah Cartmell (DeMonfort University, Leicester) and Alcinda Pinheiro de Sousa (Universidade de Lisboa). She is a researcher at the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies (ULICES), holds a degree in Modern Literatures and Languages, and concluded her MA in 2013, with a dissertation on initial sequences of film and television adaptations of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Besides adaptation, her research interests include fantasy fiction (literature and film), zombies and other undead fictional creatures and past/present dichotomies in postmodernity.
Ana Rita Martins is an English lecturer in the Department of English Studies at the Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, and a researcher at the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies (ULICES). She holds an MA in Medieval English Literature and is currently working on her PhD in Medieval Popular Romance in Middle English. Her main research interests include Arthurian romance; medieval romance; medievalism; monsters and monstrosity; comics; fantasy and science fiction.
Angélica Varandas is Assistant Professor (w/ tenure) in the Department of English Studies at Universidade de Lisboa where she teaches English Linguistics, Science Fiction and Fantasy, as well as Medieval Culture. She has written various articles on medieval literature and culture and has published two books about Celtic mythology: Mitos e Lendas Celtas: Irlanda (Lisboa, Livros e Livros sob a chancela da Centralivros, 2006, 370 pp.) and Mitos e Lendas Celtas: País de Gales (Lisboa, Livros e Livros sob a chancela da Centralivros, 2007, 386 pp.). She coordinates the Science Fiction and Fantasy Project, Messengers from the Stars.
Catarina Xavier is a researcher at the University Lisbon Centre for English Studies. She taught Media Translation at the Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras. She holds a B.A. in Modern Languages and Literature and an M.A. in Applied Linguistics. She is currently finishing her Ph.D. on Audiovisual Translation and the Subtitling of Taboo. Her main research interests are Audiovisual Translation, Subtitling, the Translation of Taboo, and Censorship in the Media.
Diana Marques has a degree and an MA in English and American Studies from the Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, with a dissertation on English medieval literature and culture. She is a researcher at ULICES (University Lisbon Centre for English Studies) and is currently working on her Ph.D. about Fantasy literature. Her main research interests include fantasy and science fiction literature, medievalism, Arthurian myth and legend.
João Félix is a screenwriter with two award-winning television shows and a lecturer in Storytelling at the School of Communication and Media Studies in Lisbon. He has translated a number of genre novels into Portuguese and has a PhD in Science Fiction and Utopia from the University of Sussex. His current research interests focus on apocalyptic narratives and the interplay between readership and serialization.
José Duarte teaches North-American Cinema at Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, and develops a post-doc project on cities and cinema funded by FCT. He is also a researcher at ULICES (University Lisbon Centre for English Studies). His main research interests include Science Fiction; Dystopias; Apocalyptic Cinema; Television Studies and SF Cinema and Comics. He co-coordinates the Science Fiction and Fantasy Project, Messengers from the Stars.
COLLABORATORS
Aline Ferreira is an Associate Professor at the University of Aveiro in Portugal where she teaches English Literature. Her main interests comprise the intersections between literature and science, bioethics, feminist utopias and women’s studies. Publications include I Am the Other: Literary Negotiations of Human Cloning (Greenwood Press, 2005). She is now working on a book provisionally entitled The Sexual Politics of the Artificial Womb: Fictional and Visual Representations.
Carlos Martinho is Professor at the Computer Science Department of Instituto Superior Técnico – Universidade de Lisboa (IST) where he lectures on several courses related to videogames, computer science and artificial life. He is a researcher at INESC-ID. He published several articles on the subject of artificial intelligence and co-authored the book Design e Desenvolvimento de Jogos (FCA, 2014).
Igor Furão holds a Bachelor Degree in Languages, Literatures and Cultures: Comparative Studies, by the Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, and a Masters Degree in Comparative Studies, by the same institution. His main research interests are Memory Studies, Emotion Studies in Arts, and Biopolitics. He currently holds a PhD scholarship and is participating in the International FCT PhD Programme in Comparative Studies (PHDCOMP).
José Varandas is Auxiliary Professor at the Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras (FLUL), where he completed his PhD in 2005 with the dissertation: “«Bonus Rex» ou «Rex Inutilis». As Periferias e o Centro. Redes de Poder no Reinado de D. Sancho II (1223-1248)”. His main research interests include Medieval History, Military History, Rural History and Maritime History.
Margarida Vale de Gato Assistant Professor in the English Department of the Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, where she teaches in the areas of American Studies and Translation. As a full research member of the American Studies Group of ULICES, she published several essays, such as Edgar Allan Poe em Portugal (2009) and the co-edition (with Emron Esplin) of the volume Translated Poe (2014), as well as of the anthology of translated literature Nem Cá Nem Lá – Portugal e América do Norte Entre Escritas (2015), a milestone of the project PEnPAL in Trans, which she coordinates. She is a literary translator, having translated American authors engaged with sci-fi before it really existed (Poe, Twain).
Mónica Paiva holds a degree in Modern Langues and Literature – English and Spanish. She has an MA in English Studies with a thesis entitled “Melodrama à Beira de um Ataque de Nervos: Para uma análise contrastiva entre o Mundo Conceptual de Douglas Sirk e a sua Apropriação no Cinema de Pedro Almodóvar.” Currently she is a researcher at the University of Lisbon Center for English Studies (ULICES) and works as a translator.
Rui Prada is an assistant professor at the Computer Science Department of Instituto Superior Técnico – Universidade de Lisboa (IST), where he teaches courses on User Centered Design, Social Intelligent Agents and Game Design and Development. His research interests are on social intelligence of virtual agents and its application to games. The current research focus is on social power and social identification as means to achieve believability in complex social situations and on the use of online platforms, such as Facebook and OpenSimulator, for serious gaming. He is currently the vice-president of the SPCVideojogos (Sociedade Portuguesa de Ciências dos Videojogos).
Teresa Botelho is Associate Professor of North American Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Nova University of Lisbon. Her interest in SF encompasses Afrofuturism, post-singularity and post-human fiction (as well as cinema and television) and the intersection of SF with utopia and dystopia.
JUNIOR RESEARCHERS
David Klein Martins is currently writing his master’s thesis as part of the English and American Studies MA program at Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, centered ostensibly on queer representations in American slasher film of the 1980s. His particular research interests lie in the fields of gender studies, queer theory, American popular culture, as well as (horror) film studies. Born and raised in a bilingual German/Portuguese household in southwestern Germany, David has chosen the city of Lisbon as his new home.
Diogo Almeida is currently finishing his MA in Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras. His main interests include SF and Fantasy Literature, Comics and Television Studies.
Miguel Troncão is doing his MA on English and American Studies at Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras. He is currently writing his thesis on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, focusing on the author’s concept of hero and heroism, and how do the various characters reflect that same concept. His main research interests include fantasy and science fiction literature, medievalism and themes concerning the creation of the hero.