On this website you will find the open-access online publication of the papers presented at the Symposium Timor: Scientific Missions and Colonial Anthropology held at the Overseas Historical Archives, Lisbon, on 24 and 25 May 2011. The conference proceedings include papers by Portuguese and Timorese scholars who work on the anthropology and history of science in East Timor, during the Portuguese colonial period. Authors include Cláudia Castelo, Fernando Figueiredo, Manuel Lobato, Vítor Rosado Marques, Maria do Rosário Martins, Ana Cristina […]

During the Portuguese colonial administration of East Timor, a considerable number of articles, reports, and books were produced and published about the indigenous peoples and cultures. The research team has been surveying these publications – the majority of which have been published in Portuguese – in order to reach an overview of the Portuguese ‘colonial knowledge’ regarding Timor. These publications touch on disciplines and topics as varied as history, linguistics, biological anthropology, social and cultural anthropology, and allow one to […]

The research team is currently working on the production of an Online Dictionary of Biographies which will present brief biographical articles about some of the most significant Portuguese authors who published on the history and anthropology of East Timor in the period 1850-1975. This dictionary is expected to be a useful research resource for everyone interested in knowing more about the biographical background of those who wrote about Timor Leste in the Portuguese colonial period. Professional anthropologists and ethnographers but […]

We are a research team composed of a group of scholars studying the colonial history of anthropological research in Timor Leste from the nineteenth century to the mid-1970s. Our research covers a broad range of actors and knowledge endeavors associated with the study of the Timorese races, languages, and cultures during the modern period of the Portuguese colonization. We are interested in tracing the colonial, indigenous, and scientific dimensions of anthropological knowledge praxis in the past, and in what we […]