Teresa Le joins Kaleidoscopio as visiting fellow

Teresa Le, an MA student in Development Studies at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa joined Kaleidoscopio as visiting scholar. Since August 2015, Le has been conducting fieldwork in Maputo city for her MA dissertation entitled: State Autonomy During Neoliberalism – The Case of Social Cash Transfers in Mozambique.

Kaleidoscopio’s archaeologist Albino Jopela, initiates a discussion on heritage conservation, governance and poverty in the Mozambique Island

In a talk given at the seminar series of the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at Eduardo Mondlane University last May, Albino Jopela suggested that power relations among key actors undermine the implementation of projects to improve conservation and management of the island’s heritage and the living conditions of its inhabitants. Successful implementation of new approaches to heritage conservation such as UNESCO’s Historic Urban Landscape Approach, transcends the technical sphere. It calls for central government’s political willingness to move beyond official rhetoric on the importance of culture and heritage for development that ultimately is not translated into key policy documents and a meaningful devolution of decision-making powers and resources to local institutions such as the Conservation Office of the Island of Mozambique.

Liazzat Bonate, new research associate at Kaleidoscopio

Liazzat Bonate, a lecturer in African History at the University of the West Indies (UWI), St. Augustine in Trinidad and Tobago joined Kaleidoscopio last January as a research associate. Dr. Bonate holds MA degrees from SOAS, University of London, UK and Northwestern University, USA, and PhD from the University of Cape Town. Over the past two decades, she has conducted research on history and contemporary affairs of northern Mozambique, focusing on coastal communities, Islam, gender, colonialism, matriliny, Arabic script, land and Human Rights, liberation struggle, memory and politics. At Kaleidoscopio, she has integrated the working group conducting research on slavery, memory and the ocean.