Tag: Beatriz Serrazina

  • Archaeologies of Unfree Labour and Liberal Fantasies of Abolition

    Archaeologies of Unfree Labour and Liberal Fantasies of Abolition

    Book Chapter


    Archaeologies of Unfree Labour and Liberal Fantasies of Abolition

    Book: The Oxford Handbook of the Comparative Archaeology of Slavery
    Authors: Rui Gomes Coelho, Xurxo Ayán Vila, Reinhard Bernbeck, Heather Burke, Beatriz Serrazina, Claire Smith, Camille Westmont

    Editors: Professor Mark Paul Leone, Dr. Jane Louise Webster

    Date: 2026

    Summary

    This chapter focusses on experiences of slavery and unfree labour that emerged in the age of abolition and its aftermath, continuing to the present day. It engages with the idea that the persistence of slavery is grounded on labour and affective practices structured along lines of race, class, and gender that were first articulated within slavery-based societies during the nineteenth century. Rui Gomes Coelho outlines the development of ‘Second Slavery’ as an industrialised, technological, and science-oriented institution that emerged out of American plantation economies. Camille Westmont contextualises the history of convict leasing and penal labour in the United States—one of the many legacies of antebellum slavery in the South. Heather Burke and Claire Smith focus on the development of unfree First Nations labour in Australia, a settler colony that was consolidated after the formal abolition of slavery. Beatriz Serrazina analyses forced labour in mining projects in colonial Africa, with a focus on Diamang, a mining company that operated in late colonial Angola. The last two sections deal with the ways in which labour and affective practices structured within the institution of slavery shaped Europe’s contemporary societies, especially along the lines of race and gender. Reinhard Bernbeck discusses the materiality of slavery under the Nazis and argues that archaeology is a crucial tool to critically reflect on suffering and modes of witnessing. Finally, Xurxo Ayán Vila looks at the materiality of sexual exploitation in contemporary Galicia, in northwest Spain.

    Access the 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.

  • Concrete Colonialism: Material Power and Non-human Agency in Angola and Mozambique

    Concrete Colonialism: Material Power and Non-human Agency in Angola and Mozambique

    Communication

    Concrete Colonialism: Material Power and Non-human Agency in Angola and Mozambique

    Event: VII CHAM Conference: On the Move
    Authors: Beatriz Serrazina, Francesca Vita
    Date: 15 – 18 April 2026

    Location: Colégio Almada Negreiros, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa

    Mabubas Dam, Upstream and downstream views of the spillway, 1951
    [AHU, OP5602]
    Cabora Bassa, Construction site with cement and aggregate silos in the foreground [ANTT, 010/0027/00027]

    Summary

    This paper explores the role of concrete as a central nonhuman actor in the construction of the Mabubas Dam (Angola, 1948–1956) and the Cahora Bassa Dam (Mozambique, 1969–1974), two of the most ambitious infrastructural projects undertaken during Portuguese colonial rule in Africa. Far from being a passive material, concrete actively shaped the colonial built environment through its circulation, adaptation, and resistance. Drawing on colonial engineering reports and construction site photographs, the paper argues that the mobilities and immobilities of concrete – its extraction, transport, building techniques and structural limitations – impacted colonial ambitions, dictating where and how power could be spatially imposed, by who or what.

    The dams were not just technical achievements, but also symbols of colonial modernity, progress and imperial permanence. Yet their construction depended on the successful movement and response of concrete across challenging landscapes, labour regimes and other non-human agents, like rivers. In both Angola and Mozambique, concrete had to be localised and moulded – to climatic conditions, terrain, and available raw materials – demonstrating its active role in shaping every stage of the building process from conception to construction. These processes reveal how concrete connected colonial building sites through standardised technologies, not just as a medium but also as a co-author of form and temporality, while also producing uneven landscapes of extraction and labour exploitation.

    This paper places material infrastructure at the centre of (trans)colonial negotiations, emphasising the agency of concrete within a shared imperial framework. It discusses how the materiality and limitations of concrete reflected and enacted various dynamics of power, construction skills and design practices throughout the Portuguese empire in Africa. In doing so, it aims to contribute to ongoing discussions on non-human actors in architectural history.

    [Panel 20: Nonhumans Mobilities and Immobilities in the Colonial Built Environment, organized by Alice Santiago Faria].

  • Impérios corporativos: As genealogias transnacionais da arquitectura sócio-recreativa no colonialismo português (1930–1970)

    Impérios corporativos: As genealogias transnacionais da arquitectura sócio-recreativa no colonialismo português (1930–1970)

    Communication

    Impérios corporativos:

    As genealogias transnacionais da arquitectura sócio-recreativa no colonialismo português (1930–1970)

    Event: Workshop “Ditadura, instituições e quotidianos coloniais”
    Authors: Beatriz Serrazina
    Date: 19 – 20 Março 2026

    Location: Universidade de Cabo Verde, Polo 3, Cabo Verde

    Diamang Main Staff House, Dundo, 1950s [DCV-UC/AD]
    Foyer Social, Kinshasa, Belgian Congo, 1940

    Summary

    As actividades da Diamang na Lunda, no nordeste de Angola, ao longo do século XX, no âmbito do colonialismo português, envolveram não só a extracção de diamantes como também a construção de infraestruturas, habitação e equipamentos colectivos nas mais variadas escalas e programas. Esta apresentação visa a Casa do Pessoal da companhia, criada em 1936 e com sucessivas expansões nas décadas seguintes, explorando as diversas materializações da instituição e respectivos contextos de produção. Organizada como espaço fundamental na ordem social na Diamang, simultaneamente incluindo e separando diferentes grupos sócio-raciais, a Casa do Pessoal revela múltiplas interacções com a população e o seu quotidiano, do planeamento e construção à utilização, adaptação e negociação.

    As dimensões formais e funcionais da arquitectura parecem evidenciar semelhanças que desafiam concepões tipológicas e retóricas das instituições sociais e recreativas que sustentaram ambições políticas de controlo social. Neste sentido, a apresentação propõe uma abordagem cruzada entre a Casa do Pessoal, a Casa do Povo e os Centros Recreativos – instituições planeadas e construídas entre as décadas de 1930 e 1970 em geografias industriais que dialogaram com Diamang, tanto a nível territorial, como do ponto de vista económico e corporativo. A análise sublinha a importância de considerar conexões mais amplas e complexas entre o aparelho do Estado Novo português e a sua dimensão colonial, num campo historiográfico em que as intersecções no eixo metrópole-colónias suscitam ainda importantes questões analíticas, e também com outras geografias próximas, nomeadamente o caso do Congo Belga, desafiando os limites do nacionalismo metodológico. As relações directas com as pretensões sócio-recreativas da FNAT ou as cartilhas laborais belgas, anunciadas pela própria companhia, ou as apropriações formais feitas na Lunda a partir das propostas arquitectónicas para as Casas do Povo em Portugal, no final da década de 1940, indiciam diálogos que complicam genealogias de poder, ordem e contestação.

  • Construction and labour in motion. A methodological approach to film images of colonial infrastructures

    Construction and labour in motion. A methodological approach to film images of colonial infrastructures

    Communication

    Construction and labour in motion. A methodological approach to film images of colonial infrastructures

    Event: Construction History and Films International Symposium
    Authors: Francesca Vita, Beatriz Serrazina, Ana Vaz Milheiro
    Date: 19 – 20 February 2026

    Location: CIUL, Lisbon, Portugal

    “Construction and Labour in motion” presentation, 2026
    Database structure

    Summary

    This paper focuses on the cataloguing, data processing and visualisation of film images for studying construction and labour history during Portuguese colonial rule in Africa. As part of the European-funded project Architecture, Colonialism and Labour (ArchLabour), which examines the impact of labour on colonial architecture, this paper explores how the ArchLabour team has shaped a methodology of visual information management through the creation of a digital database that places film images at the centre of queries on the construction and labour of major colonial infrastructures, including dams, railways, settlements, ports and airports. What methods can be used to trace the multiple dimensions of construction and labour represented in colonial film images? How do tools of data management can assist research on construction history, establishing new relationships between categories and revealing unnoticed aspects of construction? How can data from the visualisation of films help research on construction history and labour?

    The paper discusses the design of a digital database, built from scratch by the ArchLabour team together with a group of visual programming experts, and explores how visual data management can be applied for studying colonial construction and labour. In this light, it contributes with a practical example of film images analysis and proposes operational ways to unveil invisibilities of construction history, subaltern labour, non-human actors and material agency.

  • Colonial Construction Practices in Portuguese News (1960s–1970s)

    Colonial Construction Practices in Portuguese News (1960s–1970s)

    Communication

    Colonial Construction Practices in Portuguese News (1960s–1970s)

    Event: International Symposium Construction History & Film
    Authors: Beatriz Serrazina
    Date: 19 – 20 February 2026

    Location: CIUL, Lisbon, Portugal

    Two workers using trowels to plaster a brick wall [Construção civil em Benguela, 1968, RTP Arquivos]
    Team assembling moulds on a viaduct along the Cubal variant construction [Construção do caminho de ferro do Cubal, 1973, RTP Arquivos]

    Summary

    This presentation examines a selection of short documentary films from the archives of RTP (Rádio e Televisão de Portugal), originally broadcasted on the Noticiário Nacional [National News] programme in Portugal in the 1960s and 1970s. Produced during the country’s late colonial period, these black-and-white films – between two to five minutes long – documented construction work in several territories in Africa under Portuguese rule. They covered a variety of contexts, typologies and scales: sanitation projects in Beira, Mozambique, building sites in Luanda, Angola, road construction in São Tomé, railways and bridges, and the monumental hydroelectric dams of Gove, Cambambe, and Cabora Bassa. Unlike written records, which mostly emphasised technical plans and quantitative aspects such as costs or completion deadlines, the moving images reveal the practical, hands-on dimensions of construction and public works, from materials to the coexistence of manual and mechanical work. They capture how infrastructures were assembled, how tools and machinery were handled by workers – frequently absent from technical reports –, and how labour was organised on site. The paper argues that these archival films constitute an invaluable visual archive for rethinking the history of construction and architecture within the context of empire, intersecting multiple dimensions of labour, technology, and material power.

  • Building the Fringes of Empire: Mining Companies, Transnational Experts, Race and Space in Colonial Africa

    Building the Fringes of Empire: Mining Companies, Transnational Experts, Race and Space in Colonial Africa

    Book Chapter


    Building the Fringes of Empire: Mining Companies, Transnational

    Book: Routledge Critical Companion to Race and Architecture
    Author: Beatriz Serrazina

    Editors: Felipe Hernández and Itohan Osayimwese

    Print: Routledge, 2025

     Workers’ camp at Union Minière, Katanga (Ern. Thill, Bruxelles)
    Village for Cape Verdean workers, Lunda, Angola (Diamang’s archives, DCV-UC/AD)

    Summary

    Mining company towns and workers’ villages in Central Africa, inhabited by thousands of mine‐ workers and families, insightfully picture how difference between race, class and gender was spatialised through various building politics, protocols and materials. This chapter aims to highlight the complex and diverse ways the concept of ‘race’ was deployed and impacted in spatial planning. It explores company settlements and policies as apparatuses of layered trans‐imperial connections and circulations that turned cross‐fertilised expertise in space and architectural design into key tools for consolidating power. The multi‐scalar networks participating in these concessions are here examined to surpass the still dominant state‐centred frames of analysis which fail to disclose the strength of transnational connections, while allowing to assess the role of other experts in empire building. Located in‐between borderland areas, private enterprises became significant fields of experience and translation for architectural models and construction techniques, thus pushing research to move beyond dichotomic approaches towards more polyhedral perspectives.

    Click here to access the manuscript.

  • A “Não-Simultaneidade” nas Construções Coloniais: o caso da Barragem das Mabubas, Angola

    A “Não-Simultaneidade” nas Construções Coloniais: o caso da Barragem das Mabubas, Angola

    Communication

    A “Não-Simultaneidade” nas Construções Coloniais: o caso da Barragem das Mabubas, Angola

    Event: CEAFE 2025
    Authors: Ana Vaz Milheiro, Beatriz Serrazina
    Date: 13 February 2025

    Location: Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade Agostinho Neto, Angola [online]

    Houses and workshops in the construction site, 1948 [AHU, OP3010)
    One of the indigenous villages near the Mabubas construction site, 1948 [AHU, OP3010)

    Summary

    A Barragem das Mabubas, construída em Angola entre 1948 e 1954, foi a primeira grande obra de infraestrutural promovida pelo Estado português em África para sustentar o colonialismo face ao crescente escrutínio após a Segunda Guerra Mundial. A sua extensão de 70 metros, perto de Luanda, resultou num estaleiro de grandes dimensões. A partir das circunstâncias políticas, sociais e tecnológicas do caso das Mabubas, esta apresentação pretende investigar os estaleiros de construção colonial para contribuir para debates mais amplos sobre estes lugares. Enquanto estaleiro fixo, que deu origem a uma nova povoação, a obra das Mabubas oferece um terreno de investigação complexo, que reuniu milhares de pessoas, diferentes tarefas e hierarquias laborais. Serão exploradas três relações: as dinâmicas entre trabalhadores europeus e africanos, as tensões entre as comunidades africanas e as interações entre vários níveis de especialização, tais como as hostilidades em relação a outras geografias coloniais, como os trabalhadores cabo-verdianos, considerados mais “qualificados”. Através da “não-simultaneidade” proposta por Heine e Rauhut, a apresentação visa acrescentar novas perspetivas à análise das peculiaridades e complexidades dos estaleiros coloniais. Enquanto os estaleiros europeus se baseavam em sistemas conhecidos pelos técnicos superiores, os espaços de construção produzidos sob o colonialismo apresentavam maiores níveis de incerteza. As autoridades coloniais não controlavam as competências das comunidades africanas nem materiais locais. Para além de apresentar um mapeamento crítico do estaleiro, a comunicação questionará a sua materialização no arquivo. Que informação pode ser recolhida nos relatórios? Que camadas estão ausentes (nomeadamente sobre a presença de mulheres)?

  • Colonial labour housing: a ‘propaganda’ tool?

    Colonial labour housing: a ‘propaganda’ tool?

    Communication

    Colonial labour housing:

    a ‘propaganda’ tool?

    Event: European Architectural History Network. 8th International Conference
    Authors: Beatriz Serrazina
    Date: 19 – 23 June 2026

    Location: National Technical University of Athens, Greece

    Union Minière, Lubumbashi Camp, Katanga, 1928[AGR, Sibeka, 530]
    Tipo de aldeia indígena Diamang, 1942 [DCV-UC/AD]

    Summary

    Colonial space was often produced for and supported by mineral extraction. Yet, none of the extractive businesses set up in Africa throughout the first half of the 20th century could run without workforce. By requiring the engagement of thousands of African people, private companies responsible for housing their labourers. Since both enterprises and governments believed disruption within the intimacy of household could serve multiple ends, villages became critical spaces for simultaneously running industrial areas and carrying out a “modernising” mission envisioned by European powers. In 1961, the director of a mining company’s labour service, operating in north-eastern Angola, wrote a few telling words: “The advantages of a well-built brick house are well known. Adding to labour productivity and stability, we must highlight the propaganda factor. What a valuable propaganda tool a permanent house is!”

    By following transformations in labour housing typologies over time, and while acknowledging strong inter-imperial networks connecting private corporations across Central Africa, mainly between Angola and Belgian Congo, this presentation aims to question the domestic space as a core arena for shaping, enduring and contesting colonialism. It will unpack house planning, design and materials, from the first “propaganda villages” in the 1930s to the later “modern neighbourhoods” built in the 1960s. Companies repeatedly tried to work with “models” and “types” of houses to create “legible” landscapes and “modern” communities – but reports show that reality on the ground was often messier than intended. Despite colonial imaginaries, “modern” houses run along native domesticities, thus shaping an intricate landscape.

    The overall goal is to understand how and to what extent transformations in housing have resulted from and been fuelled by different agents and agendas: the demands and know-how of local communities, the requests of international and inter-imperial organisations, the possibilities of growing scientific and technological research, alongside companies’ productivity drives.