Noemi Alfieri (ORCid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0914-273X ) is a Hired Researcher at NOVA-FCSH, under the CEEC-FCT International Call, and an Integrated Member of Researcher at CHAM – Center for Humanities, NOVA-FCSH, UaC. She is a member of the Board of Directors of CHAM, serving as Deputy Director for the Research Team Dynamics, having also served as Deputy Director for Graduate Studies and Research. She is a member of the Editorial Board of Cultura and Práticas da História and she has taught the curricular unit “Anti-colonial Literatures in Portuguese, French, and English: An Overview” within the UI offering of NOVA-FCSH.
Her project “Mapping Anti-colonial Networks through Literature. Transnational Connections of African Thinkers in the Reconfiguration of Space and Thought (1950s – 70s),” funded by FCT, adopts an interdisciplinary approach between Literary Studies and History. It focuses on the connections between the journals and editorial projects Mensagem (Lisbon), Présence Africaine (Paris and Dakar), and Black Orpheus (Ibadan). The project examines the circulation of objects, ideas, and literary texts to reflect on the transnational networks established between Africa, Europe, and South America by writers and intellectuals influenced by Negritude, Pan-Africanism, and anti-colonial movements. It also reflects on internal contradictions and historical constraints, with particular attention to power dynamics and the underrepresentation of women’s agency in the historicization of these literatures, aiming to highlight their contributions to the Portuguese literary corpus.
She was a Visiting Researcher at several renowned institutions in the field of African Studies, including the ASCL – African Studies Centre (Leiden University, 2024), the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence (Bayreuth University, 2022/23 academic year), through the Bayreuth Academy for Advanced African Studies, and CEM Eduardo Augusto Kwamba – ISCED-Luanda (2019). At ACM, she secured collaborative funding (DFG) for the Postdoctoral Working Group “Digital Trans*formations in Africa: A Space for Intellectual and Material Capital,” which she coordinated and moderated together with colleagues from UB and Humboldt University – Berlin. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow and a member of the FCT project AFROLAB: The Construction of African Literatures. Institutions and Recognition inside and outside the Portuguese Language (1960-2020). In 2020, she was part of the Evaluation Team for the PNL – National Reading Plan, financed by the General Secretariat of Education and Science, contributing to the formulation of public policies related to reading.
She was an Integrated Member of CLEPUL (FLUL), where she participated in Group 2 – African Literatures and Cultures. She is also an Associated Member of CREPAL – Centre de recherches sur les pays lusophones (Sorbonne Nouvelle University) and the Áfricas Group (UERJ-UFRJ). In addition to the funded projects mentioned above, she was a member of the FCT project WOMENLIT – Women’s Literature: Memories, Peripheries, and Resistance in the Luso-Afro-Brazilian Atlantic (CHAM, NOVA-FCSH), and of the COST Action 18126 – “Writing Urban Places” (EU). She has recently started collaborating with the ERC ALMEDA – African Literary Metadata project (Uppsala University), coordinated by Ashleigh Harris, to create and provide datasets related to the circulation of African and Afro-diasporic literatures published in Portuguese or translated in the Global South.
She holds a PhD in Portuguese Studies (History of the Book and Textual Criticism) from NOVA-FCSH, with the dissertation “(Re)Building Identity through Conflict: An Approach to African Literatures in Portuguese (1961-74),” which received an Honorable Mention at the Mário Soares Prize (2021). She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Modern Languages and Literatures (Spanish and Portuguese, 2013) from the Università degli Studi di Torino (Italy) and a Master’s degree in Modern Languages and Literatures (Portuguese) from the same university, with a dissertation on Angolan Literature and the work As aventuras de Ngunga (2015).
She has extensive experience in organizing international conferences in Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Colombia, Brazil, and other countries, as well as in Germany – where she recently organized a workshop at the Iwalewahaus Museum (Bayreuth) in 2024, with participation from members of the MOI-Centre (Kenya), the Université Des Lettres et des Sciences de Bamako (ULSHB), and artists from the continent and its diasporas. She has engaged in numerous science outreach initiatives, particularly through interviews with women writers (in podcast and written formats), as well as participation in Book Fairs (Lisbon and Maputo) and publication in periodicals such as Cultura (Angola) and O País (Mozambique). She is also a writer and translator: her work, especially poetry, is published in books, anthologies, and journals in Portugal, Brazil, the United States, Germany, and Italy.