Noemi Alfieri

Noemi Alfieri is a visting fellow at the African Studies Centre Leiden. She is a Contracted FCT CEEC Researcher at CHAM, Centre for the Humanities (NOVA-FCSH, Lisbon) and a  Member of the Board of Directors of CHAM, as Subdirector for Graduate Studies and Research.

Her current project “Mapping anti-colonial networks through literature. Transnational connections of African thinkers in the reconfiguration of space and thought (1950s - 70s)”, focuses on the connections between the editorial projects Mensagem (Lisbon), Présence Africaine (Paris and Dakar) and Black Orpheus (Ibadan).

She was a Visiting Fellow at the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence (University of Bayreuth) for the 2022/23 ay. At the ACM, she was also awarded Collaborative Funding for the Postdoctoral Working Group: “Digital Trans*formations in Africa: A Space for Intellectual and Material Capital” (Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, U.Bayreuth), which she co-coordinates and co-convenes with colleagues from UB and Humboldt U. Berlin. Former Post-Doctoral Research Fellow of the FCT-ID project Afrolab: Building African Literatures. Institutions and Consecration inside and outside the Portuguese-Language Space 1960-2020, based at CLEPUL (FLUL, University of Lisbon - 2022). In 2021, she was a Member of the PNL Evaluation Team, focusing on reading practices in Portugal. She is a Member of the Editorial Board of Práticas da História and Cultura, an Associate Member of CREPAL (Sorbonne Nouvelle Université, France); a member of the research group Áfricas (UERJ-UFRJ); a Member of the International Group for Studies of the Colonial Periodical Press of the Portuguese Empire (IGSCP-PE, CHAM). In November 2019, she researched at CEM Eduardo Augusto Kwamba (ISCED-Luanda). She is also a team member of the FCT-funded Projects AFROLAB (UL) and WOMENLIT - Women's Literature: Memories, Peripheries and Resistance in the Luso-Afro-Brazilian Atlantic (CHAM, NOVA-FCSH).  Her research focuses on African editorial projects from the 1950s to the 1970s.

She gained her 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 written in Portuguese (1961-74)". This dissertation was founded by FCT-IP and received an Honorable Mention for the Mário Soares Prize-EDP Foundation (2021). She holds a BA degree in Modern Languages and Literatures (Spanish and Portuguese, 2013) from the Università degli Studi of Turin, Italy. She holds an MA degree in Modern Languages and Literatures from the same university, with a dissertation on Angolan literature (2015).

She is a writer and translator, having joined collective editorial projects, exhibitions and artistic residencies.