On December 23, 2020, the University of Aveiro awarded the International Prize in Cultural Studies Virgínia Quaresma in the Career and Best Doctoral Thesis in Cultural Studies modalities. The Career Award was sponsored by the Regional Culture Directorate of the Center, in Portugal.
The Best Doctoral Thesis Award in Cultural Studies was awarded to Sara Vidal Maia, for her thesis on Power Relations and Gender Identity (s): Ílhavo’s “matriarchal” society in the 1950s, defended in 2016, in the Doctoral Program in Studies Of the Universities of Aveiro and Minho. The thesis discusses the concepts of power, discourse and identity, especially gender identity and applying it to the study of the media and its role in the construction, dissemination and interpretation of gender differences. Through the analysis of the textual and imaginary speeches of the newspaper ‘O Ilhavense’, the thesis seeks to deconstruct the myth of an alleged matriarchal society in the city of Ílhavo, in the centre of Portugal, marked, in the 20th century, by the strong presence of the fishing industry in the cod, which caused city men to remain absent for most of the year.
The Virgínia Quaresma Prize also distinguished with honourable mentions the doctoral theses of Lélian Silveira, entitled The European Look at Brazil: from exoticizing paradise to tourist commodification, by Walter Chile, entitled Scenic traquitanas – theatrical knowledge and fishing gear : The decolonization of the cenotechnician at Teatro Cacuri, and by Catarina Laranjeiro, entitled Between Images and Spirits: encounters with the memory of the war of liberation in Guinea-Bissau.
The theses of Lélian Silveira and Walter Chile were defended in the Doctoral Program in Cultural Studies at the Universities of Aveiro and Minho, respectively in 2017 and 2019 and that of Catarina Laranjeiro was defended in the Doctoral Program in Post-Colonialisms and Global Citizenship, Faculty of University of Coimbra, in 2018.
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