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Luciana Martins

Positions held:
  • Professor of Latin American Visual Cultures, School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
  • Programme Co-Director, MA Medical and Health Humanities ; School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
  • Programme Director, BA/Grad Cert Spanish and Latin American Studies; School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
Address

Room 327M, 39-47 Gordon Square

Email
  • Overview

    Overview

    Biography

    Originally trained in architecture and urban planning, Luciana Martins specialises in visual and material culture, historical geography, and environmental humanities. She joined Birkbeck in 2003. A founding Director of the Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies - CILAVS (2007-16), she was until recently CILAVS' Co-Director (2020-23). Since 2017 she has been a Visiting Researcher at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. She was Assistant Dean for Research in the School of Arts at Birkbeck (2021-23).

    Highlights

    • I participated in the panel commemorating the centenary of Alexander Hamilton Rice's final expedition to Amazonia (1924-
      25), which was part of 'Explore: RGS Expedition and Fieldwork Festival' at the Royal Geographical society, London, 4 November 2024

    • I gave a keynote lecture entitled 'The Romance of Tropical Nature? Vision, Imagination and the Dynamics of Life in Richard Spruce’s Botanical Observations in Amazonia' at Romanticism's Colonial Legacies in and beyond Europe International Conference, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany, 10-12 October 2024

    • I presented a paper on 'Reactivating the biocultural archive: the case of the Spruce collection' at the Plant Humanities and Botanical Collections International Workshop at the Botanical Museum, University of Padua, Italy, on 15 April 2024

    • My discussion of Archie Davies' book A World Without Hunger: Josué de Castro and the History of Geography is now published online: 'The Visuality of Hunger', Espaço e Cultura

    Office hours

    Please contact me by email to arrange an appointment.

    Qualifications

    • PhD Geography, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, 1999
    • MSc Geography, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, 1994
    • First Degree: Architecture and Urban Planning, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, 1986

    Administrative responsibilities

    • Programme Co-Director, MA Medical and Health Humanities
    • Programme Director for BA/Grad Cert Spanish and Latin American Studies and Chair of the Sub-Board of Examiners

    Visiting posts

    • Visiting Researcher, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew,

    Professional activities

    Member of the AHRC Peer Review College, 2012-to the present

    Professional memberships

    • Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

    • Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)

    • Member of the Association of British and Irish Lusitanists

    • Member of the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland

    • Member of the Society for Latin American Studies

  • Research

    Research

    Research interests

    • The visual culture of travel and exploration
    • History of photography and film
    • Biocultural collections
    • Digital humanities

    Research overview

    I am currently completing a book entitled Drawing together: the visual archive of expeditionary travel, supported by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship. The book explores the practice and experience of image-making as deployed on European expeditions to South America from the 1850s to the 1950s.

    Since 2015, I have been working with colleagues from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and other Brazilian institutions on a research programme on the biocultural collections of nineteenth-century botanist and explorer Richard Spruce. Drawing upon my previous AHRC-funded research project on Andean textiles, Weaving Communities of Practice, which developed a pioneering digital knowledge base, this collaborative project aims to reanimate the artefacts that Spruce sent to Kew Gardens and other British institutions. Details of the latest project on this research programme, funded by the British Academy, can be found at Digital Repatriartion of Biocultural Collections: Rio Negro, Amazonia.

    Research Centres and Institutes

    Research clusters and groups

    Research projects

    Digital repatriation of biocultural collections: connecting scientific and indigenous communities of knowledge in Amazonia.

    Abstract

    Sustainable use of plant resources within the Amazon rainforest is a key priority both for human livelihoods and the maintenance of forest biodiversity. Indigenous peoples of Northwest Amazonia practice effective and sophisticated forms of land management, but these practices are under threat from migration, increasing mobility and loss of inter-generational knowledge transmission. Valuable information relevant to this challenge is contained in biocultural collections held both within and outside Brazil. Unlocking this potential requires an integrated, equitable approach to collections research and the capacity to share information with a wide range of end users. This project brings together an international and interdisciplinary team of indigenous and non-indigenous researchers to develop a digital portal of biocultural collections. Advancing methods of co-curatorship, including the making of new objects, the project will develop protocols for access of these biocultural heritage materials, which will be documented in a targeted policy report.

    Funded by
    British Academy
    Funder ID code
    KF2\100197
    Funding type
    Knowledge Frontiers

    Drawing together: the visual archive of expeditionary fieldwork.

    Abstract

    This project investigates practices of visual observation by European travellers in South America, including the British botanist-explorer Richard Spruce (1817-1893), the Italian artist-ethnographer Guido Boggiani (1861–c. 1902), the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009), and his wife Dina Dreyfus (1911-1999). Ranging widely across a variety of different media, including drawing, photography and film, the project explores the role of image-making in cross-cultural exchange and encounter.

    Funded by
    Leverhulme Trust
    Funder ID code
    RF-2016-625\5
    Funding type
    Research Fellowship
  • Supervision and teaching

    Supervision and teaching

    Supervision

    Supervisions within Birkbeck:
    10

    Current doctoral researchers

    • CHRISTINA BAUM
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor, onwards
      Title of thesis:
      On Writing A Brazilian Tale and Researching the Life of the Storyteller Luzia Teresa dos Santos
    • MARIANA MILLECCO RIBEIRO
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor, onwards
      Description:

      The present research proposal consists of observation and analysis of the visual narrative construction of the female characters Maria Monforte and Maria Eduarda (mother and daughter) in two audiovisual adaptations, 2001 and 2014, from the nineteenth-century homonymous book, Os Maias (The Maias, 1888), by the Portuguese writer Eça de Queiróz.

      The first one was produced by the Brazilian television network Rede Globo de Televisão. It was broadcast in 2001 and directed by Luis Fernando Carvalho. The second one is the Portuguese movie from 2014, directed by João Botelho, Os Maias - Cenas da vida romântica (The Maias – Story of a Portuguese family), was also turned into a television series one year after its cinema’s debut and presented by the Portuguese channel RTP.

      I will investigate the relationship between the various elements of the characters costumes constructed on the image (period representation, shapes, materials, textures, colours...) and the relation of this set with the role of the characters in the narrative plot. Putting into question the belonging of the tragic nature in the narratives, and observing those constructions, I can identify meanings as the “fallen Woman cycle” (Auerbach, 1982) theory, which will give me information to confirm the different directors’ approaches to women’s possibility of being guilty. From the comparison between the text of the novel and its visuality presented in the TV series, I will explore how the characterization and costumes of the characters Maria Monforte and Maria Eduarda present the supposed displacement of the tragic force of feminine passion for the physical force of nature itself as the proclaimer and main gear on the wheel of fatal events. The objective is to establish the place and function of the image of these women in the visual discourse of the TV series. There is a play between the logic of internal and external references that design the construction of the costume, “infinite games of costumes variation”, according to Pavis (2008, p.169). The costume only makes sense of the body, suffering the action of its activity, which also subjects it to spaces, forms and conditioning, comfortable or not, and sometimes imposing changes in gesture, being an essential part of the poetic image composition. I always consider a specific choice of procedures to construct a scenic visuality as a two-way source in the studies of costumes, where the crossing of filmic research, fashion references (in this case, a historical fashion survey of nineteenth-century Lisbon society) and project development occur. The study of this intertwined process interests both future designers as a knowledge base for projects development and future researchers, as a tool for unfolding knowledge drawing attention to other research objects, hence I qualify it as a two-way source.

      Especially when our research object is a historical costume, this semiological observation itself allied to the investigation to understand its construction path brings to light deep cultural issues that say much about societies and their dynamics of organization and functioning, in addition to how this memory is loaded and worked on the construction of this intertwining which is engendered when a historical text is assembled for presentation these days.

    • ROSA DYER
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor, onwards

    Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

    • PATRICIA BONCHRISTIANO
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      Forest Matter: Art and Activism in the Brazilian Amazon
      Awarded:
      2024
    • CATARINA GANCHO FONTOURA
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor
      Title of thesis:
      Picturing Mato Grosso: The Royal Society and Royal Geographic Society Xavantina-Cachimbo Expedition 1967-69
      Awarded:
      2023
    • FREDERICO DUARTE
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor
      Title of thesis:
      The contemporary challenge of curating Brazilian design
      Awarded:
      2021
    • RAUL VALDIVIA MURGUEYTIO
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor
      Title of thesis:
      Camera Subalterna: Self-representation and Governmentality at the Margins in Lima, 1986-1993
      Awarded:
      2019
    • AGATA LULKOWSKA
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor
      Awarded:
      2018
    • BEA CABALLERO
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor
      Awarded:
      2018

    Teaching

    Teaching modules

    • The Arts: Perspectives and Possibilities (ARAR008S3)
    • The Arts: Questioning the Contemporary World (ARAR009S3)
    • Reading Transnational Cultures (Level 5) (ARCL022S5)
    • Research Skills Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern Languages) (ARCL061Z7)
    • Memory and History (ARCL065S7)
    • Culture and Crisis (Level 5) (ARCL125S5)
    • The Urban Experience in Brazil (ARIB131S5)
    • Doing Languages, Cultures and Applied Linguistics (ARLL004S4)
    • Culture and Image (ARLL009S4)
    • Critical Entanglements and Methods in the Medical Humanities (SSHC483S7)
  • Publications

    Publications

    Article

    Book

    Book Section

    Conference Item

  • Business and community

    Business and community

    I have media training.

    Outreach

    Digital repatriation of biocultural collections: connecting scientific and Indigenous communities of knowledge in Amazonia, video showing project workshops July 2019 (6'04"), https://vimeo.com/357556505

    The Many Lives of a Shield, a video essay of a biography of a biocultural object from the Economic Botany Collection at Kew (8’57”), https://vimeo.com/200369869; with Portuguese subtitles, https://vimeo.com/200644645

    Workshop in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, audio-visual report of the workshop activities (3’12”), https://vimeo.com/201827169

    Plantae Amazonicae, exhibition of artwork by Kew artist in residence Lindsay Sekulowicz, co-curator [with W. Milliken and M. Nesbitt], funded by Arts Council England, Shirley Sherwood Gallery, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, October 2017-March 2018.

    El Encanto, exhibition of artwork by Birkbeck artist in residence Freddy Dewe Mathews, funded by Arts Council England, Peltz Gallery, April-May 2017.

    ‘Seven Wonders of Brazil’, BBC2, interview with Faris Kermani on the cultural history of Brazil, broadcast June 2014.

    ‘The Invention of Brazil’, BBC-Radio 4, interview with Misha Glenny on the cultural history of Brazil, broadcast May 2014.

    ‘Unnatural Histories: Amazon’, BBC4, interview on documentary film and the exploration of the Amazon, broadcast April 2011.