On 25-26 May 2026, The Lisbon Consortium hosts the Art and Diplomacy seminar by Randi Charno Levine, the former US Ambassador to Portugal and Honorary Professor in Art and Diplomacy at UCP. The series of lectures over the past two years will now continue with the welcoming of renowned artists, curators and leaders to UCP for panel discussions.
The first panel, “Institutional Decision-Making: Ethics, Risk, and Public Impact” features Adam Weinberg, Emeritus Director of Whitney Museum of American Art; Philippe Vergne, Director of Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, and artist Hank Willis Thomas. The conversation focuses on how museums and cultural institutions make high-stakes decisions involving ethics, funding, governance, public trust, and social responsibility.
The second panel “Curatorial Power: Selection, Visibility, and Narrative” features curator Rujeko Hockley and artists Alfredo Jaar and Aliza Nisenbaum. It examines curatorial decisions by discussing what is collected, exhibited, framed or omitted and how these decisions actively construct cultural meaning and historical narratives.
25 May 18:30-20:00, UCP (CLSBE, 511)
Institutional Decision-Making: Ethics, Risk, and Public Impact
Adam Weinberg (Emeritus Director, Whitney Museum of American Art)
Hank Willis Thomas (Artist)
Philippe Vergne (Director, Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art)
Chair: Amb. Randi Charno Levine
26 May 15:30-17:00, UCP (CLSBE, 511)
Curatorial Power: Selection, Visibility, and Narrative
Rujeko Hockley (Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art)
Alfredo Jaar (Artist)
Aliza Nisenbaum (Artist)
Chair: Amb. Randi Charno Levine
The seminar is open to the academic community and the public.
The applications are now open for applications for two PhD Studentships in the area of Culture Studies – Culture, Conflict, and Reparation.
The studentships will be funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) and the research activities will be carried out in collaboration with the Transform4Europe alliance.
The call is open between 07/05/2026 and 27/05/2026 until 23:59 (Lisbon time).
The applications and the supporting documents as specified in the Opening Call must be submitted by e-mail to cecc.fch@ucp.pt.
A new series of podcasts by the MA students in Culture Studies, related with the exhibition What We Can(‘t) Hold , has been released.
The first episode features Fernão Cruz, talking about fragility, humour, and the story behind his work Cair em Palco that makes part of the exhibition.
The second episode is a conversation with Manuel Botelho and it reflects on memory, war, and the story behind his work confidential/declassified: combat ration that makes part of the exhibition.
‘What We Can(‘t) Hold’, curated by students of Culture Studies (UCP) under the Curatorial and Scientific Coordination by Prof. Luísa Santos opens on 29 April 2026 at 18:30 in Galería Fundação Amélia de Mello.
‘What We Can(‘t) Hold’ is an invitation to pause, to look closely and to hold things more lightly, while reflecting on the multiple dimensions of fragility.
When everything we hold firm seems to be collapsing under the weight of uncertainty and rapid transformation, ‘What We Can(‘t) Hold’ considers fragility not as something that breaks but as a force that shapes how we live, remember, and relate to one another. Bringing together nine artists and a selection of works from the CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian Collection, this exhibition offers a reflection on multiple dimensions of fragility.
The works displayed are situated along a spectrum of intertwined notions of fragility: the personal, the structural and the frictional. Each dimension offers a different way of understanding how vulnerability cracks, bends and sometimes falls apart as soon as we touch it.
The structural dimension looks outward at the vast web that seems to hold our society together. It questions what happens when the systems we depend on begin to fracture, and injustices resurface as history repeats itself. Manuel Botelho (1950, Lisbon), through his ‘101.rç-cmb (from the series Confidential / Declassified: combat food)‘ (2007-2008), collects artefacts of moments that he didn’t witness and puts them on full display, while Miguel Palma (1964, Lisbon), in ‘Upa! Union of the People of Angola‘ (2006), seems to lock them away in plain sight. Here, fragility emerges not as a weakness, but as a signal that transformation is both unavoidable and necessary.
The personal dimension directs us inward into the delicate architecture of ourselves. It reflects identities that are always shifting, the collections of memories we archive within ourselves, and the persistent urge to hold on to what is fleeting. Yonamine (1975, Luanda), with ‘Eu não sou eu‘ (2004), and Maria Altina Martins (1953, Luanda) with ‘Time – Childhood, Adolescence, Maturity‘ (1997/2000), arrange fragments, textures of daily life, discarded materials, and scraps of memory to evoke this unstable construction, while Maria Antónia Siza (1940, Oporto – 1973, Oporto), in her series ‘Untitled‘ (60s) construct potential images leaving gaps to be filled in by the gaze of others. In ‘Falling On Stage‘ (2021), Fernão Cruz’s (1995, Lisbon) protagonist is in free fall, rendered vulnerable before the gaze of an audience.
The frictional dimension exists in a liminal space where the forces of the past and future, destruction and renewal, and the personal and collective converge. Margaret Benyon (1940, Birmingham – 2016, London) gives these dimensions holographic images that resist being grasped in her ‘Conjugal Series: Hands and Rice and Binding 2‘ (1983). In her ‘No trace of accelerator‘ (2017), Emily Wardill (1977, Rugby) transforms us into spectators of the qualities that never sit still. Finally, Gabriela Albergaria’s ‘To turn around 40‘ (2001) weaves elements of nature with artificiality.
Together, these perspectives invite us to reconsider fragility as a force of revelation of what we choose to preserve, allow us to die or rebuild. Ultimately, ‘What We Can(‘t) Hold’ is an invitation to pause, to look closely and to hold things more lightly as we navigate continuous change.
This exhibition, organised in the context of the partnership between The Lisbon Consortium of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa and CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, was curated by the MA students in Culture Studies (seminar of Curatorial Practices), for the Amélia de Mello Foundation Gallery, at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, in Lisbon.
The exhibition guide written by the 3rd-grade students, Class B, Elementary School Sampaio Garrido is available here.
This exhibition also includes a Podcast with a series of interviews; all the episodes will be available in this playlist.
Organisation Universidade Católica Portuguesa Cultura @ Católica 2026
Artists Featured
Emily Wardill; Fernão Cruz; Gabriela Albergaria; Manuel Botelho; Margaret Benyon; Maria Altina Martins; Maria Antónia Siza; Miguel Palma; Yonamine (All works: Collection CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian)
Curatorial and scientific coordination Luísa Santos
Curated by Editorial: Anika Borko; Sarah Zammit Munro; Melissa Liebertha; Direndra Selvanayagam; Sarah Tober; Anna-Sohpie Löhr Communication: Justin Stewart Ross; Natalia del Río; Leonor Marques dos Santos Queiroz; Silvia Lomdardini; Léanne Charron; Iana Kardanova Installation design: Amal Abu Nafisah; Imani D. Cooper; Margarida Dias; Margarida da Fonseca; Giulia Benetti; Circé Poisson; Tatiana Fraisse Paralell programme: Lucille Gerebtzoff; Yoosun Choi; Hajer Khader; Vitor Fonseca; Margarida Martins Raimundo; Constança Mafra (Students of the seminar in Curatorial Practices, The Lisbon Consortium – 2025/26)
Amélia de Mello Foundation Gallery – Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Director: Paulo Campos Pinto Assistant: Benjamim Lucas Pires Production: Creative Industries Programmes by SC – Sara Cavaco Graphic Design: Íris Sousa Installation: Feirexpo
CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian
Head of Exhibitions: Rita Albergaria Museography: Laurindo Marta Collection (registrar): Isabel Vicente Collection (museography): Rui Nunes; Jennifer Coito
Amélia de Mello Foundation Gallery – Universidade Católica Portuguesa. João Paulo II University Library Building, Palma de Cima
Rebecca Panigada successfully defended the MA internship report “From Neglect and Underutilization to Regeneration: The Role of Art and Culture in Urban Space” on 16 April, 2026.
Marianne Myrbostad successfully defended the MA project “Life Stories Emerging from Musical Experience – A Study of Kristiansund Municipality School of Arts Impact on Life Stories of Former Pupils and Their Influence on Community” on 25 March, 2026.
The next LXC Talks will be with Salome Gorgiladze, Executive Board Director of SUD Lisboa and Sana Hotels, who has a remarkable career in management, entrepreneurship, fashion and hospitality.
The session “Building Experiences: Where culture, hospitality and entrepreneurship meet” will take place on 13 April at 18:30-19:30 in room Brasil (Library building, 1. floor).
The talk is open to the entire academic community and the public.
María Moreno Navarro successfully defended the MA dissertation “She Who Walks: Negotiating the Gaze of the Flâneuse in 21st-Century Street Photography” on 23 March, 2026.
Lea Breyer successfully defended the MA dissertation “Performative Memorializing: Staging Trauma and Remembering Femi(ni)cidal Violence” on 16 March, 2026.
Emma Mistrangelo successfully defended the MA dissertation “Paris and the Post-Brexit Art Market: A Case Study on Perceptions and Symbolic Value” on 12 March 2026.
On February 27, we visited the new Lisbon Consortium partner, Centro Cultural de Belém, receiving the warmest welcome and an institutional presentation, including potential areas of collaboration.
We would like to thank the wonderful CCB team who took us around the different facilities – the archives, the library, the storage rooms, the Main Auditorium and the museum – and shared their knowledge and experience with us. This visit has already given rise to ideas that are being developed and we are eagerly looking forward to future collaborations.
A great writer has neither end nor death. This will always be true of António Lobo Antunes, who will remain with us in every reading, in every provocation. Universidade Católica Portuguesa and the Lisbon Consortium (FCH) deeply regret the passing of this great writer in the Portuguese language. We remember him at a moment of blossoming and joy: at the first Lisbon Summer School for the Study of Culture of the Master’s and PhD programs in Culture Studies and the first year of the Lisbon Consortium (2011), organized in partnership with the Centro Nacional de Cultura’s program, Disquiet.
Fare thee well, for literature, like nature, is eternal.
In the context of the Ecocultures seminar, we visited the exhibition “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Giovanni Blandino at Estufa Fria. The visit was guided by the curator Dela Miessen, alumna of the LXC, who gave us ta glimpse to the curatorial and production processes of exhibitions that take place in special environments and include sensitive materials, such as glass and ceramics.
The artistic practice of Giovanni Blandino employs methodologies from alchemy that aims to knowledge production through engagement with the environment.
The exhibition is ongoing at Estufa Fria until March 29, 2026.
The latest issue of Diffractions was launched on 24 February, 2026, with the presence of the Editorial Team and the Guest Editors Eduardo Prado Cardoso and Elizângela Carvalho Noronha who discussed the collection of articles that explore aging from the perspectives of communication, dance, theatre, and literature.
Anca Usurelu successfully defended the MA dissertation “Resonant Fields – Attuning to Sonic Worlds and Listening as Lived Experience” on 12 February, 2026.
Francisca Pereira successfully defended the MA dissertation “Ghosts of the Past: Representations of Cultural Trauma and Memory through Folklore in Contemporary Horror Cinema – The Case of La Llorona (2019)” on 9 February, 2026.
Alberto Blanco successfully defended the MA dissertation “The Discursive Role of Display: Curatorial Practices and Meaning in Exhibitions” on 6 February, 2026.
The launch of Diffractions special issue “Stages”, on ageing, communication and culture, takes place 24 February at 17:00 in Room Expansão Missionária. The editors and CECC members Eduardo Prado Cardoso and Elizângela Carvalho Noronha will discuss how this collection of articles that advance the discussion of ageing interconnected with various fields, such as communication, dance, theatre, and literature.
Milana Teterevenkova successfully defended the MA dissertation “From Collective Action to Self-Care: The Impact of Therapy Culture on Public Disengagement in Russia” on 26 January, 2026.
Victoria Marie Page successfully defended the PhD thesis “Searching for Feminist Visual Potencia” on 3 February 2026.
Victoria had the honor of having Prof. Angela McRobbie in the jury, participating online, along other invited established scholars, including Prof. Clara Rowland and Prof. Ricardo Campos from NOVA FCSH and our own Prof. Adriana Martins, Prof. Sophie Pinto, and the President Prof. Peter Hanenberg.
The MA students in Culture Studies of The Lisbon Consortium are curating an exhibition with the collection of CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian.
The exhibition, which will be held at the Galeria Fundação Amélia de Mello, at the Lisbon campus of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, proposes fragility not as weakness but as an active, revealing condition. Across social, personal, and perceptual dimensions, fragility exposes the tensions that form us; those that bind, unsettle, and ultimately reshape our understanding of ourselves and the worlds we inhabit.
On 15 January the students visited the reading area of Institution(ing)s to discuss ideas of accessibility in innovative communication strategies with Patrícia Rosas and exhibition narratives with Rita Albergaria and Laurindo Marta.
Students: Amal Abu Nafisah, Anika Borko, Anna-Sophie Löhr, Circé Poisson, Constança Mafra, Direndra Selvanayagam, Giulia Benetti, Hajer Khade, Iana Kardanova, Imani D. Cooper, Justin Stewart Ross, Léanne Charron, Leonor Marques dos Santos Queiroz, Lucille Gerebtzoff, Margarida da Fonseca, Margarida Dias, Margarida Martins Raimundo, Melissa Lieberthal, Natalia del Río, Sarah Tober, Sarah Zammit Munro, Silvia Lomdardini, Tatiana Fraisse, Vítor Fonseca, Yoosun Choi
On 20 January 2026, the Lisbon Consortium welcomed Philippe Vergne, Director of the Serralves Contemporary Art Museum in Porto. The open lecture “The Museum as a Muse” was part of the seminar Arts Markets and the Practices of Collecting by Professor Maura Marvão (Phillips Auction House).
Vergne discussed the meaning of the museum by referencing a variety of art institutions and museums, exhibitions, and artworks that have marked his career. Focusing on the museum as a space for experimentation, Vergne highlighted its disruptive potentials, especially in interrogating the spaces-in-between within the histories of art.
With an emphasis on acquisition, the lecture explored the responsibilities of art institutions and curators towards artists and society, including practical advice regarding tensions that may be professionally challenging yet productive.
We are honored by this exchange and look forward to the next occasion.
Brian Jay de Lima Ambulo successfully defended the PhD thesis “Contours of Resiliences: Climate futures reimagined in post-disaster Philippines” on 12 January, 2026.
The Call for Papers for the Summer School on Disobedience (June 29 – July 3, 2026) is out!
XVI Lisbon Summer School for the Study of Culture is organized in collaboration with Porto Summer School on Art & Cinema and in connection with Disobedience Archive, a curatorial project by Marco Scotini, which will present an iteration of the exhibition at the Amélia de Mello Foundation Gallery in Lisbon, with the collaboration of Ângela Ferreira.
The Summer School consists of keynote lectures, workshops, master classes, paper and poster presentations, as well as cultural programming, such as film screenings. Disobedience will be explored as an artistic practice and an idea, considering its multiple forms, dynamics, and limits. Through the focus on both macro and micro acts of refusal and dissent, as well as the visible and invisible tactics used to undermine oppressive systems or disrupt established orders, the Summer School frames disobedience as a transformative and creative act.
Invited speakers include Marco Scotini, Ângela Ferreira, Sergei Loznitsa, Ato Quayson (University of Stanford) and Markus Messling (CURE, Saarland University) – more to be confirmed.
On 9 December, Federico Bossone, the Editor-in-Chief of the latest issue of Diffractions, introduced the contents of No. 10, “You are what you eat”: On food, culture(s) and identities.
This issues considers the complex relationship between food, identity and culture. As Bossone points out, “food is not a neutral or purely sensory object but a powerful cultural medium—capable of negotiating and renegotiating heritage, contesting belonging, and acting as a means for humankind to perform status and shared ideologies […]. Its value lies in being a bearer of memories and a marker of identities. Whether examined through aesthetic practice, historical transformation, migratory flows, or ideological frameworks, food culture explores the tensions between the personal and collective, the local and global, the traditional and the innovative.” (2025, 1) The issue sets a diverse intellectual table including food memories, practices, and the ethics and politics of food, through the reflection by 9 international scholars and the artwork “Patuá: Where Portugal Meets Macau” by Eduardo Melo.
We invite you to get to know the latest issue here.
Giulia Paglia successfully defended the MA internship report “The Role of Alternative Media in Institutional Communication for Young Audiences – Factanza media case study” on 3 December, 2025.
The launch of No. 10 of Diffractions: “You are what you eat”: On food, culture(s), and identity, edited by Federico Bossone (PhD in Culture Studies) takes place 9 December at 17:00 in Room 421 (Library building).
Diffractions is an online, peer-reviewed, open-access graduate journal for the study of culture. It is published bi-annually under the editorial direction of students from The Lisbon Consortium’s doctoral programme in Culture Studies with support from CECC.
The partnership foresees the joint development of academic and cultural initiatives, including seminars, applied projects, internships, and research opportunities.
The Director of the Lisbon Consortium and the Rector of Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Professor Isabel Capeloa Gil, considers the partnership to “strengthen the unique and globally recognized character of The Lisbon Consortium,” a “truly distinctive program” that “combines critical reflection on cultural practices with management component, without being confined to it.” For the future, the partnership will allow “to co-create seminars, develop joint projects and engage our largely international student body in experiences that connect the University with the city’s cultural sector.”
Nuno Vassallo e Silva, Chair of the Board of Directors of CCB, highlights the strategic importance of this partnership for the institution: “This collaboration comes at a particularly significant moment for CCB, as we reinforce our mission through research and professional training. Joining the Lisbon Consortium will help us enhance our documentary archive and expand new opportunities for internships, study, and academic development.”
We are eagerly looking forward to this collaboration that will enrich the experience of our students and provide an important link between the cultural sector and the Academy in Lisbon.
We would like to congratulate Dzifa Peters for winning the Thinking Photography Award by The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation and the German Photographic Society (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie, DGPh). The Award Ceremony will take place on 14 November 2025 at Goethe-Institut Paris.
Portraits of contemporary witnesses of the independence movement in Ghana are packed for archiving. Dzifa Peters in collaboration with Josef Zky, from the project “Being a guest” (2015-present), C-print, courtesy of the artists.
Dzifa Peters is a visual artist, an alumna of the Lisbon Consortium and currently a research fellow in the Integrated Human Development Scholarship program at UCP, developing her research on photography, memory and Afro-diasporic identities in the post-migration context in Portugal. The award is granted for the dissertation “Tropes of Polarity: Visual Representation and Afrodiasporic Identities” (PhD in Culture Studies). In it, Peters explores how colonial, postcolonial and Afrodiasporic identities are represented and shaped by contemporary photography. She pays particular attention to the medium’s role in preserving memory, determining belonging and communicating different cultural perspectives and identities.
The research award “Thinking Photography” is endowed with €3,000 and honours publications from the field of photographic theory and history that expand the topic area with important approaches from the humanities, cultural studies and social sciences.
The jury explained its selection as follows: “With this inspiring study, Dzifa Peters presents an academically outstanding work that addresses a current issue. In it, she uses different photographic positions and art-based research to explore changes in cultural identity through photography, focusing specifically on the context of West Africa and its diaspora in Europe. In doing so, she not only makes an important contribution to photographic research, but also provides a linguistically accentuated, differentiated and extremely well-founded text. We were particularly impressed by the skillful inclusion of her own artistic practice.”
“It is a true honour to receive the “Thinking Photography” prize in recognition of my doctoral thesis, Tropes of Polarity: Visual Representation and Afrodiasporic Identities. I am deeply grateful to the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation and the German Photographic Society (DGPh) for this recognition. My heartfelt thanks go to my supervisor, Professor Isabel Capeloa Gil, and my co-supervisor, Apl. Professor Dr. Michael Basseler, whose thoughtful guidance and unwavering intellectual support have shaped this research in profound ways. I am also thankful to the members of the examining committee for their generous engagement and invaluable feedback. Above all, I owe a great debt to the artists and scholars whose ideas and creative work have inspired and informed this project from the very beginning.
The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation and the German Photographic Society (DGPh) will jointly present the “Thinking Photography” prize and the “Writing Photography” prize during an award ceremony on 14 November 2025 at the Goethe- Institut in Paris. On this occasion, I will have the pleasure of discussing my research in conversation with Lucia Halder, Curator and Head of the Photography Collection at the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum in Cologne.” (Dzifa Peters)
The Lisbon Consortium 