Ana Balona de Oliveira and Thais França are the next Visiting Professors at Brown University, in the academic year 2025/26, and will teach courses on contemporary Portugal for a semester, in the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies.

This program is the result of a partnership between FLAD and Brown University, under which every year two Portuguese professors or those residing in Portugal are selected to teach a semester at Brown University, within the areas of History or Social Sciences (e.g. Sociology, Anthropology or Political Sciences), addressing contemporary Portugal, The theme may be extended to Portuguese-speaking societies and/or have an international comparative dimension.

Researchers Ana Balona de Oliveira and Thais França were chosen by the jury to teach a chair in the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown University, considered one of the best institutions of higher education in the United States. The choice of the two candidates took into account the quality of the curricula, the experience of teaching in English and the relevance of the syllabus of the subjects proposed by the selected candidates.

The jury was composed of António Costa Pinto, Coordinating Researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Onésimo Teotónio Almeida, Full Professor and Researcher at Brown University, Cristiana Bastos, Anthropologist and Researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Patrícia Ferreira, Director of Graduate Studies and Assistant Professor at Brown University, and Elsa Henriques, former administrator of FLAD, who chaired the jury.

Ana Balona de Oliveira is an Assistant Researcher (FCT/CEEC) at the Institute of Art History of the NOVA University of Lisbon (IHA/NOVA-FCSH), where she co-coordinates the line ‘Transnational, Decolonial and Feminist Art Practices’. She is an Invited Assistant Professor at NOVA-FCSH and an independent curator.

In the Autumn Semester of 2025, Ana Balona de Oliveira will teach the subject Art and Visual Culture from the Lusophone Black Atlantic: A Decolonial and Comparative Approach. The course addresses historical and contemporary circulations between Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe and Brazil through the visual, performative and material knowledge production of modern and contemporary art and curating. It draws on while displacing Paul Gilroy’s Anglophone ‘Black Atlantic’. Albeit following his attention to aesthetic production (music, performance), it focusses haptically on visuality.

Thais França is an integrated researcher at CIES-Iscte. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Coimbra. Her research focuses on migration, mobilities, gender studies, social inequalities and postcolonial studies. She is currently Associate Editor of the journal Comparative Migration Studies.

In the Spring Semester of 2026, Thais França will teach the subject Portugal: from the “welcoming” policy to the anti-immigration mobilization. The course aims to examine the transformation of the migration landscape in Portugal, from a colonial legacy of openness to cultural diversity to the rise of anti-immigration movements. It explores how the national myth of a country open to diversity, shaped by the colonial past, obscures issues of racism and migration. It will also analyze the evolution of migration policies in a post-colonial context, the role of the media in the perpetuation of stereotypes and the growth of the mobilization of the extreme right against immigration.

Congratulations and good work!