Event: Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes: roundtable series II
Date: 1 April 2025

Location: ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal


Elisiário Miranda (Universidade do Minho, PT) delivering the lecture “From the Colonial Era: Transportation Systems and Infrastructure in Mozambique”
Nina Kleinöder (University of Bamberg, DE) delivering the lecture “Building the Empire. German Construction Companies in West and South-West Africa, ca. 1900-1915”

Summary

Since 2019, the Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes International Congresses (CPCL) have been critical forums in enquiring about the entanglements between Architecture and Colonialism. While built works have often been the focus of architectural history, many actors and agendas remain to be understood. This second Roundtable on Infrastructures + Labour + Transport aims to question the role of still overlooked actors, namely mass labor, in different occupation strategies during late colonialism. The debate will bring together the team of the research project ArchLabour, funded by the European Research Council (ERC), based at Dinâmia’CET-Iscte, along with invited scholars.

The morning session will feature the launch of the book Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes I – Architectures, Cities, Infrastructures in Africa. Coast to Coast Researchers’ Book. The volume offers a series of articles by the “Coast to Coast” research team (PTDC/ATP-AQI/0742/2014), that were presented at the first edition of the CPCL Congresses, held at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon. The session will be moderated by Inês Lima Rodrigues and Leonor Matos Silva (Dinâmia’CET-Iscte) and with the participation of the authors, either in person or remotely.

In the afternoon, Elisiário Miranda (Universidade do Minho) and Nina Kleinöder (University of Bamberg) will be invited to share their perspectives on transport infrastructures – namely airports and railways –, construction sites and companies, mass labour, and colonial public works, crossing different colonial experiences and opening new avenues for research. Ana Vaz Milheiro (Iscte-IUL), ArchLabour’s Coordinator, will chair the debate.