Unit Description

CRIA, an inter-institutional centre for social and cultural anthropology was founded when two top evaluated (“Very Good” in the rankings) units of FCT — CEAS and CEMME — merged to join four other groups (CEEP/FCSH-UNL, NEA/UM, ETNA/FCSH-UNL, a group of researchers in Social and Cultural Anthropology at CIA/FCT-UC) along with other researchers without affiliation to any other research units. This national platform in anthropology provides scientific research leadership and is organized to optimize intellectual and material resources, while promoting new research opportunities at both national and international levels. CRIA assembles researchers from various institutions, many of whom have had a pre-existing relationship in cooperation on the given thematic networks, projects and activities. The administrative structure of CRIA will be divided over four institutional posts (ISCTE, FCSH-UNL, FCT-UC, UM), each post autonomous to develop its own activities as well as to promote joint activities with other research and/or teaching units. CRIA’s scientific resources will focus on research groups linked to four thematic lines, each one headed by a senior scholar responsible for the coordination and supervision of the activities to be developed. CRIA will promote researchers’ mobility to work in more than one group, facilitating institutional integration, and allowing mobility among CRIA’s institutional posts. CRIA’s administrative organization is composed of a Scientific Council, tasked with defining the unit’s main research lines, and including all scholars with the rank of PhD from the different institutional posts; an Executive Board (drawn from the members of each of the institutional posts, with positions on the Board disbursed by rule in a proportional system based on the number of each institutions eligible PhD members), charged with carrying out internal executive functions and external institutional dialogue; and an External Advisory Board, composed of Portuguese scholars and highly-regarded, internationally-recognized foreign academics. Finally, CRIA will also benefit from a centralized Secretariat, which will handle project management and financial accounting (and will be located at CEAS/ISCTE’s facilities during this consolidation phase) and the common availability of resources from its posts (such as libraries, video facilities, etc.).

General Objectives

Portuguese anthropology has participated in the revitalization and strategic reorientation of international anthropology having shared an exponential growth of collaboration among existing institutional relationships and an increase of inter-academic cooperation. These have taken place primarily in the USA, in Europe and in Brazil) Based on these pre-existing long-term and productive cooperative relationships the scholars founding CRIA intend to create a combined scientific network, capable of making the best-use of resources and skills (currently dispersed all over the country) and endow it with a greater theoretical, methodological, and thematic scientific depth. Through CRIA, a national platform in anthropology has been created for Portugal, providing scientific research leadership and organized to optimize intellectual and material resources, while promoting new research opportunities at both national and international levels. As a result, a main goal of the Executive Board will be to plan and integrate strategies to: 1) Place CRIA in a position of scientific leadership; 2) Encourage the internationalization of research and international circulation of results; 3) Reinforce the connection between science and society as a way to promote scientific culture; 4) Promote and simplify inter-institutional exchange at the level of postgraduate studies and training in anthropology.
To achieve these objectives CRIA will promote the advancement of Portuguese anthropology and its internationalization through: a) the development of theoretical and applied research projects; b) the promotion of events encouraging scientific debate and the diffusion of research (congresses, seminars and conferences); c) the edition of scientific publications (promoting the national and international diffusion of research project results); d) the organization of courses and connected activities of postgraduate teaching level; e) the encouragement of international network-based collaboration in research projects or groups, as well as in other international collaborations that promote scientific diffusion; f) the establishment and reinforcement of cooperative relationships with similar institutions, both national and international; g) and will provide a place to welcome undergraduate students, graduate students and PhDs in their integration into the scientific community.
CRIA’s general objectives will be enhanced by four main thematic research lines: 1.“Social Identities and Differentiation”; 2.“Culture: Practices, Politics, Displays“; 3.“Migrations, Ethnicity, Citizenship”; 4.“Power, Knowledges, Mediations”. In each one of these main lines, research activities will assemble eligible PhD team members from all four institutional posts. Researchers will contribute through inter-group dialogue and cooperation to create a multi-vocal platform for the advancement of knowledge in each of these four anthropological thematic research lines. Each line will also develop activities related its specific thematic research areas, simultaneously promoting events and approaches across all four lines.
To best achieve these objectives, CRIA’s Executive Board will work to facilitate mobility of human resources, to seek and to obtain alternative funding sources, primarily through the establishment of cooperation protocols with similar institutions as well as with nongovernmental organizations in Portugal and abroad.

Executive Board

Antónia Pedroso de Lima (ISCTE), João Leal (FCSH-UNL), José Gabriel Pereira Bastos (FCSH-UNL), Manuela Ivone Cunha (U. Minho), Nuno Porto (U. Coimbra), Paula Godinho (FCSH-UNL), Paulo Raposo (ISCTE).

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