Category: News

  • [UPCOMING] Archival Pace: Bureaucratic Orders, Silences, and Critical Archival Practices in Documenting Public Works and Labour in Africa

    [UPCOMING] Archival Pace: Bureaucratic Orders, Silences, and Critical Archival Practices in Documenting Public Works and Labour in Africa

    Panel

    Archival Pace: Bureaucratic Orders, Silences, and Critical Archival Practices in Documenting Public Works and Labour in Africa

    Event: Archival Education and Research Initiative (AERI) 2026 Conference
    Panel Chairs: Filipa Lopes; Sónia Pereira Henrique
    Authors: Filipa Lopes; Sónia Pereira Henrique; Ana Vaz Milheiro; Francesca Vita; Beatriz Serrazina; Inês Lima Rodrigues; Fernando Pires

    Date: 20-24 July 2026

    Location: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC

    Summary

    This panel, comprising members of the interdisciplinary team of the ERC ArchLabour project, adopts the concept of archival pace as a guiding lens for understanding historical archives inherited from the Portuguese colonial administration in Africa. By combining critical analysis of these archives with interdisciplinary approaches, from archival description practices to oral histories, the panel argues that grasping labour in public works requires a dual movement: recognising the limits imposed by colonial and postcolonial bureaucracies and archives and finding ways to make visible practices and experiences they silenced, particularly those of workers.

    First, Milheiro and Vita explore how waged workers are represented in the records, thereby discussing simultaneously the presence and agency of women in colonial public works (PW), a presence often obscured by interpretative frameworks embedded in records and archival description practices. Serrazina examines the Diamang archive, using the company’s extractive activities in Angola as evidence of socio-spatial control and labour discipline, and as a documentary technology that simultaneously produced categories, silenced resistance, shaping both landscapes and labour.

    Henrique, drawing on her background working at the Portuguese Overseas Historical Archive, elaborates on how different rhythms and practices in PW and labour records affect access to information, interrogating how archival authority is constructed. Lopes and Pires address how archival description, or its absence, in the archives of Cabo Verde shapes access to information and memory on PW, proposing collaborative indexing and metadata strategies that render overlooked workers and dynamics visible.

    Finally, Rodrigues analyses housing and public works records, tracing bureaucratic and technical rhythms shaped by control and standardisation, and advancing slow-archive approaches grounded in oral histories to reinforce memory and inform architectural practice. Together, the panel conceptualises the archive as a contested field where interdisciplinary collaboration can address archival asymmetries and foreground overlooked dimensions of construction and labour.

    Communications in this panel

    Ana Vaz Milheiro and Francesca Vita, Women, Labour and Visibility in Colonial Public Works Records

    Beatriz Serrazina, The Diamang Archive as Corporate Technology: Categories, Absences and Socio-Spatial Control

    Sónia Pereira Henrique, Slowly Seeking Authority: Content and Use of Public Works Records at the Portuguese Overseas Historical Archive

    Filipa Lopes and Fernando Pires, Between Silences and Labyrinths: Contributions to Improving Access to Information and Memory on Labour and Public Works in Cabo Verde’s Archives

    Inês Lima Rodrigues, Colonial and Postcolonial Housing and Public Works: Archival Rhythms, Silences and Unarchiving

    _

    Click here for the full programme.

    [Cover image] Building of the Directorate‑General of Public Works Services, Lourenço Marques (Mozambique). In Relatório do Governador Geral de Moçambique (1940-1942), ID AMU08748.3, AHU, cx. 3/1726.1. Courtesy of the PT, AHU.

  • Surveying the Colonial Islands: Maria Emília Caria in Cape Verde During the Liberation Wars (1961– 74)

    Surveying the Colonial Islands: Maria Emília Caria in Cape Verde During the Liberation Wars (1961– 74)

    Journal Article


    Surveying the Colonial Islands: Maria Emília Caria in Cape Verde During the Liberation Wars (1961– 74) 

    Journal: Fabrications, The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand 
    Authors: Ana Vaz Milheiro

    Date: 2026

    Fabrications, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2026.2672911
    Maria Emília Caria, Fonte Filipe, “Mindelo, São Vicente,” in Report of the Urban Planning and Housing Working Group Mission to Cape Verde, vol. 3, 2nd dossier, 1964. AHU/DSUH series, item 2130/07204. 

    Summary

    This article focuses on the experience of Maria Emília Caria, a Portuguese architect who worked for more than a decade in the archipelago of Cape Verde, one of Portugal’s five African colonies, until 1975. The study is based on archival documents, oral histories, and fieldwork, to address the scarcity of sources often characteristic of research on professional women. The article discusses how gender influenced Caria’s performance as an architect, and how the confinement of her work to a marginal territory in the Portuguese colonial context ultimately allowed her to play an influential and autonomous role. Caria’s main period of activity coincided with Colonial or Liberation Wars (1961–74), which, although not directly affecting Cape Verde, would influence both so-called “welfare programmes” and access to public and private investment. The state of extreme deprivation and precariousness of these islands would ultimately affect Caria’s urban planning proposals and, consequently, their eventual failure. 

    Access the article here.

    Cover image: Maria Emília Caria, Urbanisation Project for the City of Mindelo – Island of São Vicente, Cape Verde, 1969. Stored at the Instituto do Arquivo Nacional de Cabo Verde, Praia, box no. 1673. Photograph of archival record by Ana Vaz Milheiro, 2025. 

  • The Salazar Foundation’s Private Housing Assistance in Africa During Late Portuguese Colonial Rule (1969–78)

    The Salazar Foundation’s Private Housing Assistance in Africa During Late Portuguese Colonial Rule (1969–78)

    Journal Article

    The Salazar Foundation’s Private Housing Assistance in Africa During Late Portuguese Colonial Rule (1969–78)

    Journal: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians  85 (2): 253–274.
    Authors: Ana Vaz Milheiro

    Date: 2026

    Caputo neighborhood, former Salazar Foundation neighborhood, Luanda, Angola, 1974 (author’s photo, 2024).
    Outskirts of the Craveiro Lopes neighborhood, former Salazar Foundation neighborhood, Praia, Cabo Verde (author’s photo, 2025).

    Summary

    The Fundação Salazar, or Salazar Foundation, was a private agency set up in the late 1960s to build assisted housing for the “economically weak” urban and rural populations across Portugal and former African and Asian territories under Portuguese rule (Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Timor). It developed small-scale neighborhoods using consistent programmatic typologies (collective four-story blocks in urban/suburban locations and single-family houses in rural or peri-urban areas). By 1978, when the Salazar Foundation was dissolved, it had built neighborhoods in twenty-four Portuguese cities and nineteen former colonial regions, with a total of 2,067 housing units. This article examines the foundation’s activities, which were supported at the highest levels of metropolitan and colonial powers and also became the subject of political propaganda. It questions the housing program as a key strategy of the Portuguese rule to control populations and delay their potential involvement in the anticolonial struggle.

    Read the full article here.

  • Villagisation and Military Agency in Late-Colonial Africa: A Comparative Study of Guinea- Bissau and Mozambique (1968-1974)

    Villagisation and Military Agency in Late-Colonial Africa: A Comparative Study of Guinea- Bissau and Mozambique (1968-1974)

    Communication

    Villagisation and Military Agency in Late-Colonial Africa: A Comparative Study of Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique (1968-1974) 

    Event: The Military History Consortium Conference

    Author: Ana Vaz Milheiro, Francesca Vita

    Date: 4 May 2026

    Location: Sciences Po Aix, Aix-en-Provence

    Cuntima strategic village, Guinea-Bissau [PT/AHU]
    Candodo village, Mozambique [PT/AHU]

    Summary

    This paper focuses on the villagisation programs implemented during the final years of the liberation war in Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique, examining the involvement of the army in regrouping local population by constructing new settlements and infrastructures as a tactic of war. The villagisation plans in Guinea-Bissau and in the Tete Region of Mozambique occurred simultaneously (1968-c.1974), affecting rural areas characterised by low population density and subsistence agriculture. However, the role of the army in carrying out these programs differed significantly in terms of implementation, materialisation and outcomes. In Guinea-Bissau, villagisation was almost entirely directed by the army, with minimal support from civil authorities. As a result, the process followed military procedures, leading to the standardisation of building techniques, materials, and housing layouts. The hierarchical structure of military organisation, directly depended on the general governor, shaped both decision-making and execution, adjusting construction options with military logistical needs. In contrast, in the Tete Region, villagisation resulted from the simultaneous intervention of multiple actors – both civil and military – each pursuing their own agendas and mobilising their own resources. This overlapping of authorities diluted military centralisation and generated more heterogeneous settlement layouts and housing typologies, producing also greater variability in building materials and techniques. Through a comparative analysis of these two cases, grounded in archival research in both civil and military archives in Portugal, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique, this paper contributes to understanding how military organisation operated on the ground and how military and civil strategies became intertwined to consolidate control and secure local support. It highlights how differing degrees of military hierarchy and centralisation shaped the choice of construction systems, settlement layout, building materials, housing typologies and ultimately the reordering of rural populations.

  • The ‘welfare’ as warfare. The two side of the liberation war in Guinea-Bissau 1968–1974

    The ‘welfare’ as warfare. The two side of the liberation war in Guinea-Bissau 1968–1974

    Communication

    The ‘welfare’ as warfare. The two side of the liberation war in Guinea-Bissau 1968–1974 

    Event: The Military History Consortium Conference

    Author: Francesca Vita, Christian Kjellsson 

    Date: 3 May 2026

    Location: Sciences Po Aix, Aix-en-Provence

    Military school post, Guinea-Bissau [PT/AHM]
    “Escola do Mato” (forest school) in PAIGC liberated areas [SWE/NordicAfricanInstitute]

    Summary

    This article focuses on the entanglements between the military and civilian tactics carried out by the Portuguese army and the PAIGC during the last years of the liberation war in Guinea-Bissau 1968–1974. Discussing the psychological warfare and the spatialisation of war through the construction of new infrastructures – for example schools, warehouses and healthcare centres. This article analyses how the Portuguese army and the PAIGC simultaneously undertook strategies within the civilian realm as a tactics of war. 

    In 1968, when the general António de Spínola was appointed the new governor of the Portuguese Guinea and head of the army, the military strategies implemented to win the war against PAIGC extended from the military to the civilian sphere. Under the guise of rural development, Spínola launched a programme of housing, infrastructures, education and healthcare improvement supported by soft-counterinsurgency and psychosocial warfare to win the hearts and minds of Guinean population. On the other side, the PAIGC’s leader Amilcar Cabral responded to Spínola’s strategy by turning to an unexpected actor to enable a counterstrategy: Sweden. Swedish para-military support to PAIGC comprised material aid, ranging from didactic books to perishable goods, to be delivered to the liberated areas under the party’s control. 

    In order to tackle the two side of the liberation war, this study relied on the combination of the authors competences within the field of military history and history of architecture, enabling a cross-competence and transnational analysis using archival material from Sweden and Portugal. By discussing how military and civil activities interloop during the war, and for both sides, this paper contributes to new perspectives on the liberation struggle in Guinea-Bissau, highlighting simultaneous strategies of “welfare” as war tactic. 

    Cover image: Birgitta Dahl, Swedish Social democratic parliamentarian and SIDA employee together with journalist Knut Andreassen visit to PAIGC liberated areas (nov., 1970) [SWE/NordicAfricanInstitute]

  • Portuguese Modern Design and the Contemporary Materialities of the Empire

    Portuguese Modern Design and the Contemporary Materialities of the Empire

    Communication


    Portuguese Modern Design and the Contemporary Materialities of the Empire

    Event: Crafting Furniture in the Global South: Contemporary Practices, Histories and Futures
    Organiser: Dr Rukmini Chaturvedi 

    Author: Francesca Vita

    Date: 9 May 2026

    Location: Design History Society online symposium

    Logs shipping at the Port of Ponta Negra, Cabinda [PT/AHU]
    Double School Desk, Móveis Olaio, José Espinho [PT/MCS]

    Summary

    This article examines the materialities of the Portuguese Empire in everyday furniture, raising questions about the relationship between extractive material ecology in Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique and furniture in post-war Portugal. In the post-war years, public buildings and middleclass houses were characterized by furnishings mostly made of tropical woods. African timber was extracted, processed, and shipped from the colonies to the metropole, where it was primarily used in the production of furniture and in interior design. Renowned Portuguese companies, such as Olaio, produced a wide range of design products from African woods, contributing to furnishing both the private and public dimensions of the Empire and to developing a modern lifestyle in Portugal.

    On the one hand, by drawing from the analysis of iconic pieces of design that shaped the history of furniture in Portugal and that are still in use in public and private spaces and, on the other hand, by examining the imperial trade of timber in the post-war period, this article raises questions about the relationship between Empires and the design industry, between furniture making and the transimperial economy, and between the Global North and South regarding furniture.

    Based on archival materials from Portuguese manufacturers, architects, and designers, as well as documentation from colonial archives regarding timber trade, this article simultaneously highlights the place of production and the point of consumption of modern design. In doing so, it challenges the Western-centric history of design in the post-war era that has minimized the connection between modern design and extractive material ecology in the Global South. The Portuguese case study is treated as a pilot subject matter to broaden the discussion to other European countries about the interdependence between modern design and imperial projects, questioning what remains of this legacy today both in the history and practice of furniture making.

    Cover image: Log’s sawing at Olaio factory, Loures (196?) [courtesy of Museu de Cerâmica de Sacavém ]

  • Villages as Construction Sites. Recording Compulsory Settlement in the Zambezi Valley Through Aerial Photographs, Mozambique (1970–1974)

    Villages as Construction Sites. Recording Compulsory Settlement in the Zambezi Valley Through Aerial Photographs, Mozambique (1970–1974)

    Journal Article

    Villages as Construction Sites. Recording Compulsory Settlement in the Zambezi Valley Through Aerial Photographs, Mozambique (1970–1974)

    Journal: Ædificare, Revue internationale d’histoire de la construction, 2025 – 2, n. 18 [Construction Site Photography]
    Authors: Ana Vaz Milheiro

    Editors: Laurence Heindryckx, Tom Broes, Simon De Nys-Ketels, and Robby Fivez
    Publication: Garnier Classics, 2026

    Estima. Construction of a school. General view of the village. Sector B – Rural Redevelopment. Subsect. 11. July/1974 [96/7/74] Zambezi Plan Office. Photographic archive [AHU, PT/IPAD/MU/GM/GPZ/2332/07236]
    Pandira village. Municipality of Barué – Vila Gouveia. Sector D – Subsector 8-17. May/1973 [99/5/73] Zambezi Plan Office. Photographic archive [AHU, PT/IPAD/MU/GM/GPZ/2332/07236].

    Summary

    The forced resettlement in the Zambezi Valley in the province of Tete brought together military and economic interests to serve the extension of Portuguese colonialism in Mozambique. It was set up during the Colonial War (1964-1974) as a means of halting the progress of the Mozambique Liberation Movement (FRELIMO), but also because of the launch of the Cabora Bassa dam’s construction.

    Although this construction produced one of the most complex construction sites in Portuguese colonial history, the focus of this analysis is on the colossal resettlement operation associated with its completion, as a double consequence of the reservoir and the war. The dynamics of territorial reordering, which began in 1968, transformed a region of around 100,724 square kilometers into a huge construction site of fluctuating intensity. Building systems that had been practiced in the region for centuries coexisted with new technologies resulting from the influx of industrial materials, creating a “creolized” rural landscape.

    To document the process, around 400 photographs were taken, many of them from helicopters or planes, reinforcing a view of a subalternized reality through a uniform and orthogonal layout that contrasted with the pre-colonial segmented landscape. The five photographs that make up this essay are part of this group of aerial photographs and have been titled in sequence: Foundation; Surveillance; Polyphony; Order; Skilled. Taken as an “bird’s-eye view”, they not only allowed to follow the perspective of the colonial authorities, avoiding direct contact with the population, but also to grasp the simultaneity of tasks in the construction of a village.

    One wonders about absence (Foliard, 2023): at no point did the camera stray into explicit violence. Contrary to the written documentation that also listed these operations, figurative evidence was denied for events such as the destruction of ancestral settlements or the frequent resistance to being an “aldeado”.

    Read the full article here.

  • The Technical Gaze. Exploring Photographic Dissonances and Colonial Narratives in the Mabubas Dam, Angola, 1948–1954

    The Technical Gaze. Exploring Photographic Dissonances and Colonial Narratives in the Mabubas Dam, Angola, 1948–1954

    Journal Article

    The Technical Gaze. Exploring Photographic Dissonances and Colonial Narratives in the Mabubas Dam, Angola, 1948–1954

    Journal: Ædificare, Revue internationale d’histoire de la construction, 2025 – 2, n. 18 [Construction Site Photography]
    Authors: Ana Vaz Milheiro; Beatriz Serrazina

    Editors: Laurence Heindryckx, Tom Broes, Simon De Nys-Ketels, and Robby Fivez
    Publication: Garnier Classics, 2026

    Group of four houses for single workers [top right, a child laying bricks on the side wall of the house], Mabubas, 1948 [AHU, OP3010].
    Diversion tunnel; underwater works, Mabubas, Angola, 1951 [AHU, Inspection Report, OP3010]

    Summary

    The Mabubas Dam, built in Angola between 1948 and 1954, was the first major infrastructure project promoted by the Portuguese state in Africa. It was designed to bolster colonialism against the growing criticism after World War II. Located near the country’s capital, Luanda, the dam’s sheer size—70 meters in length—transformed the area into a bustling, dynamic construction site. This project involved thousands of people, multiple tasks, and complex labor interactions.

    This article delves into two illustrated reports written by Portuguese engineers at different stages of the dam’s construction, offering a unique insight into the project’s evolution and the contrasting perspectives of the experts involved. While their technical expertise was paramount, their observations reveal a more complex and often conflicting narrative about the colonial enterprise. The first report, dating from 1948, included a series of monthly accounts and emphasized the technological advancements and ‘modernity’ of the dam endeavor. The second report, written in 1949, shifts focus to the daily realities of the construction site, providing a more nuanced, and arguably more critical, view of the project’s socio-spatial dimensions.

    These materials reveal interactions, conflicts, and contradictions arising from different actors and agendas. In particular, the photographs provide new and deeper layers of information by telling parallel stories to the written records. This information highlights how the engineers navigated the site and the often-overlooked contributions and struggles of marginalized groups. Women, for example, who were absent from the text, could be seen in the images. This disparity between the textual and visual sources raises important questions: What can we learn about the roles and tasks assigned to workers, the racial inequalities embedded in the system, and the dynamics of gender relations? What can be learned from this technical gaze and different photograph perspectives – simultaneously “colonial” and “negotiated” – about the engineers’ interactions within the construction site, as well as those of the workers being photographed? The article explores the differences between the words and photographs in the reports from different perspectives and on different topics. This challenges the nature of colonial narratives and offers fresh insights into spatial production, labor interactions and how power and landscapes were constructed, documented and remembered.

    Read the full article here.

  • Participation in Seminar “Buildings, Space, Power: Postcolonial and Decolonial Histories of the Built Environment”

    Participation in Seminar “Buildings, Space, Power: Postcolonial and Decolonial Histories of the Built Environment”

    Communication

    Participation in Seminar “Buildings, Space, Power: Postcolonial and Decolonial Histories of the Built Environment”

    Seminar: Buildings, Space, Power: Postcolonial and Decolonial Histories of the Built Environment

    Organiser: Itohan Osayimwese (inviting Professor)
    Authors: Beatriz Serrazina
    Date: 13 April 2026

    Location: Brown University [online]

    Summary

    Participation in the Seminar Buildings, Space, Power: Postcolonial and Decolonial Histories of the Built Environment, coordinated by Professor Itohan Osayimwese, at Brown University. It consisted of a presentation on the ArchLabour project and a brief report on the Colonial and Post-Colonial Conference: Architecture, Cities, Labour, which took place in Lisbon in February 2026. It also included the presentation of ongoing research and a conversation with graduate students about the book chapter ‘Building the Fringes of Empire: Mining Companies, Transnational Experts, Race and Space in Colonial Africa’, which was published in the Critical Companion to Race and Architecture (Routledge, 2025), edited by Felipe Hernández and Itohan Osayimwese. Topics discussed ranged from oral history as a methodology and extractivism to race and racism, expertise and skills, the production of spatial knowledge over time, archives and the selective mobilisation of socio-spatial categories.

    More about the seminar here.

  • A construção territorial de Cabo Verde – Diálogos entre ilhas: As facetas invisíveis da ocupação do interior

    A construção territorial de Cabo Verde – Diálogos entre ilhas: As facetas invisíveis da ocupação do interior

    Proceedings

    A construção territorial de Cabo Verde – Diálogos entre ilhas: As facetas invisíveis da ocupação do interior

    Publication: Arquipélagos em Diálogo, VI Seminário Internacional AEAULP
    Authors: Fernando Pires
    Editors: Pedro Rodrigues, Ljijana Čavić and Hugo L. Farias

    Date: 2026

    Áreas mais povoadas da Ilha de São Nicolau. Intervenção sobre pormenor da carta de António Carlos Andreas (c. 178.). Biblioteca Pública Municipal do Porto, Pasta 24. Figura 30.
    Áreas mais povoadas da Ilha da Boavista. Intervenção sobre pormenor da carta de António Carlos Andreas (c. 178.). Biblioteca Pública Municipal do Porto, Pasta 24. Figura 29.

    Summary

    O processo de construção e estruturação do território em Cabo Verde ocorreu de forma lenta e desigual. Essas caraterísticas confirmam a dificuldade em desenhar os seus contornos, sobretudo pela sua longa temporalidade, quase quatro séculos, e também pela natureza cíclica que o acompanha. Os ciclos de povoamento e ocupação das ilhas estão correlacionados com as diferentes fases da história do arquipélago e com a estreita ligação que se estabelece em cada uma delas com as sucessivas transformações da sociedade cabo-verdiana, de escravocrata em camponesa. Nestes ciclos, irromperam cidades, vilas e povoações que organizaram, estruturaram e modelaram o território. São elas os núcleos a partir de onde se estabeleceu um diálogo contínuo entre as ilhas levantando questões relativas à própria identidade do arquipélago, que sucessivamente se reconfigurava. Neste artigo, pretende-se trazer para a discussão este processo e clarificar os interstícios da formação e estruturação do território em Cabo Verde, tendo em conta os diferentes agentes e temporalidades das transformações do território, onde se incluem europeus, africanos e a população já nascida nas ilhas. A intenção é afastar-se da forma tradicional de leitura do processo, em que o foco prioritário são os núcleos urbanos do litoral, invertendo o olhar para o interior.


    [Eixo temático: 9. Cidade e território, (in)formalidades e temporalidades.]

    Read the article here.