Poet, engineer, botanist, ethnologist, Ruy Cinatti was one of the most remarkable and eclectic Portuguese writers on the cultures and landscapes of Timor Leste in the twentieth-century.
Click HERE to read historian Cláudia Castelo’s extensively researched biographical sketch of Ruy Cinatti, as part of our Online Dictionary of Biographies.

Image credits: Ruy Cinatti in Timor. Espólio de Ruy Cinatti na Biblioteca Universitária João Paulo II, Universidade Católica Portuguesa. Disponível em: http://www.snpcultura.org/fotografias/ruy_cinatti/23.jpg

In 2012 and early 2013 the team has been involved in the organization of three symposia about the history and anthropology of Timor Leste. You can read about the events in the section “Conferences” of our website or download the conference programmes below.

Image: Postcard Timor c. 1966. Fonte: IICT.

TIMOR LESTE: MEMÓRIAS E HISTÓRIAS DA ANTROPOLOGIA
Auditorio da Universidade Nacional de Timor Lorosa’e (UNTL)
Dili, 4 August 2012

DOWNLOAD the conference program here.

TIMOR-LESTE NO ESPAÇO DE ENCRUZILHADAS CULTURAIS
Biblioteca Espaço por Timor
Lisboa, 1 February 2013

DOWNLOAD the conference program here.

TIMOR LESTE: QUINHENTOS ANOS EM CONTACTO COM O MUNDO
Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa – Anfiteatro III
Lisboa, 24 and 25 October 2012

DOWNLOAD the conference program here.

Timor Leste has received growing attention from Portuguese scholars since the referendum of 1999. At Portuguese universities, a number of humanities’ and social sciences’ works were produced in the course of the last ten years, including many Master and PhD theses. Many of these, however, have not been published, and thus they have little or no impact beyond academic circles. On the occasion of celebrating 10 years of Timor Leste’s restauration of Independence, the conference Timor Leste: 10 anos de estudos e teses. Reflectir e devolver (Timor Leste: 10 years of studies and theses. Reflecting and giving back) was held in Lisbon on 17 and 18 May 2012, with the purpose of bringing Portuguese academic research about Timor Leste into dialogue with the wider community.

VIEW here the VÍDEO with all the conference presentations and discussions online. We thank MemoriaMedia for support in making this vídeo available.

DOWNLOAD the conference program here.

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 Roque, Ricardo Roque, Frederico Delgado Rosa, Paulo Castro Seixas, Susana de Matos Viegas, among others.

Please click here to go to our page for downloading the papers.

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 glimpse not just the lives of the East Timorese people in earlier periods, but also the imageries and activities of the European colonizing communities.
As part of this survey in progress, we are providing through this website a bibliography of publications on the history and anthropology of Timor Leste, during the Portuguese colonial period. In addition to this resource, we provide a list of online publications through our Online Library.
To download a draft version of this bibliography please go to Resources/Bibliography or click here.

Please note that this bibliography is a work-in-progress and is in draft form. You are welcome to use it and cite it, but please reference it appropriately – for instance in the following form:

Ricardo Roque (coord.), ‘History and Anthropology of “Portuguese Timor”, 1850-1975. A Bibliography’, online version of 30th November 2011, available at http://www.historyanthropologytimor.org/ (downloaded on [date of access])

Image: Postcard: “Bambual”. Ed. Missão, c. 1927. Courtesy: João Loureiro.

The dictionary is a work-in-progress and is still at an early stage. If you have suggestions and would like to contribute with an entry please contact us.

To know more about this resource and read the biographies of Raquel Soeiro de Brito, Jorge Barros Duarte, Carlos Ramos de Oliveira, Ezequiel Enes Pascoal, and Sebastião Aparício da Silva, please go to Resources/Dictionary of Biographies, or click here.

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 might learn from their historical study that might be significant for future research on Timor Leste.

This website offers updated information on our research work and provides resources for everyone interested in the history and anthropology of Timor Leste.

You can find here details about our research and forthcoming events, as well as a bibliography, a short biographical dictionary of Portuguese authors, online publications, a compilation of links, and news about associated events.

Bookmark this page to keep abreast of our activities!

The project is being developed at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon and is funded by the Foundation of Science and Technology, Portugal (Reference HC/0089/2009) for the period 2010-2013. It is expected to continue its developments online through this website.

Image: KLM advert 1949. Photo by Ruy Cinatti. Source.