Elsa Peralta
FCT Research Fellow
E-mail: elsa.peralta@campus.ul.pt
Biographical note
Elsa Peralta, PhD in Anthropology (ISCSP-UTL, Portugal, 2006), is a FCT research fellow at the Centre for Comparative Studies (CEC), Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal. Her work draws on crossed perspectives from anthropology, memory studies and postcolonial studies and focuses on the intersection between private and public modes of recall of past events, in particular of the colonial past. Between 2009 and 2015 she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences (ICS-UL), Portugal, with a research project on the memory and forgetting of Portuguese colonial empire in postcolonial Portugal, and between 2009 and 2011 she was an Honorary Research Fellow in the University of Manchester. In CEC she coordinates the Research Line “Legacies of Empire and Colonialism in Comparative Perspective” and is the PI of the project “Narratives of loss, war and trauma: Portuguese cultural memory and the end of empire”. Her works include several papers and books, as well as the edited volumes Heritage and Identity: Engagement and Demission in Contemporary Society, Routledge, 2009 (with Marta Anico), Cidade e Império: Dinâmicas coloniais e reconfigurações pós-coloniais, Edições 70, 2013 (with Nuno Domingos) and Retornar: Traços de Memória do Fim do Império, Edições 70, 2017 (with Bruno Góis e Joana Oliveira). She was the curator and scientific coordinator of the exhibition Return – Traces of Memory produced by EGEAC in 2015.
Main areas of research
- Social and Cultural Memory
- Museums and Material Culture
- Colonialism and Postcolonialism
- Portugal and Portuguese Empire
- Narrative, life-history and biography
Selected publications
Peralta, E. (2017), Lisboa e a Memória do Império: Património, Museus e Espaço Público, Lisbon: Deriva/Le Monde Diplomatic.
Peralta, E., Góis, B. & Oliveira, J. (eds.) (2017), Retornar: Traços de Memória do Fim do Império. Lisbon: Edições 70.
Peralta, E. & Jensen, L. (2017), From Austerity to Postcolonial Nostalgia: Crisis and National Identity in Portugal and Denmark. In Austere Histories in European Societies: Social Exclusion and the Contest of Colonial Memories, S. Jonsson & J. Willén (eds.). London & New York: Routledge, pp. 74-91.
Peralta, E. & Oliveira, J. (2016), Pós-memória como herança: fotografia e testemunho do ‘retorno’ de África. Configurações, 17, 181-197.
Peralta, E. (2015), The Presence of the Past: Imagination and Affect in The Museu do Oriente, Portugal”. In Museum Theory: An Expanded Field, A. Witcomb & K. Message (eds.). Malden, MA, USA, & Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.
Peralta, E. (2014), Conspirações de silêncio: Portugal e o fim do império colonial. In Este País Não Existe – Textos contra ideias-feitas. B. Monteiro & N. Domingos (eds.). Lisbon: Deriva/Le Monde Diplomatique, pp. 127-134.
Peralta, E. (2014), O Monumento aos Combatentes do Ultramar: A Performance do Império no espaço sagrado da nação. In Antropologia e Performance. 100Luz, Coleção Cultura e Sociedade, pp. 213-236.
Peralta, E. & Domingos, N. (eds.) (2013), Cidade e Império: Dinâmicas coloniais e reconfigurações pós-coloniais. Lisbon: Edições 70.
Some publications are available in the repository of the University of Lisbon.
Legacies of Empire and Colonialism in Comparative Perspective / CITCOM
Narratives of Loss, War and Trauma: Portuguese Cultural Memory and the end of Empire