BIOGRAPHY
Miguel Moniz is an anthropologist (PhD, Brown University) at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais (ICS), Universidade de Lisboa in Portugal and has been a distinguished visiting scholar at Brown University and at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Moniz work has been supported by fellowships and grants on projects funded through the Fulbright Foundation, European Research Council, Portuguese National Science Foundation (FCT), Fundação Luso-Americana, the National Endowment for the
Humanities, the Rhode Island Endowment for the Humanities, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, Rhode Island Foundation, Europe for Citizens Program, and Erasmus +. He is the Executive Director of the Migrant Communities Project, a chartered 501 (C)(3) non-profit educational organization for the humanities, science, and culture, that engages social issues and promotes migrant visibility.
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In addition to scholarly articles Moniz also contributes to journalism and opinion. His research has been featured on NPR's All Things Considered and The Morning Edition, in The Atlantic Magazine, the Oregonian, Diário de Notícias, O Público, Boston Globe, Fall River Herald News, New Bedford Standard Times, Cape Cod Times, Falmouth Enterprise, and Newsweek among other publications. He has written journalism and opinion including for The New York Times, Diário de Noticias, Boston Globe, and the Providence Journal. Moniz has also provided commentary for television news programs on RTP, TVI, and SIC televisão.
current funded projects
Research Fellow/Track Coordinator, “Export Portugal. Cultural Diplomacy and the Rebranding Strategies of the Estado Novo in the United States (1933-1974)” National Science Foundation of Portugal (FCT) (2022.08653.PTDC, Gori)
Instituto de Ciências Sociais (ICS) Universidade de Lisboa
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mPI (Co-PI), “Portuguese Police Experience with Drug Decriminalization”
Rhode Island Hospital, Providence, RI
(Rhode Island Foundation; Rhode Island Hospital, Divisions of Infectious Diseases and General Internal Medicine; National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute on Drug Abuse ( K01DA056654 and R21DA057171, del Pozo)
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Executive Director, Migrant Communities Project (501(c)(3) non profit) Cultural Programs & History, Humanities, and Healthcare Educational Initiatives
RESEARCH INTERESTS
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• Labor, migration and racialization
• Substance use disorders and political policy
• Translocal and transnational circulation and place making from cultural, political, and legal perspectives
• Associativism & migrant cultural, economic, political, and socio-religious organizations
• Cultural diplomacy, policy and migration
• Anthropology of music (community building, place making, migration, activism)
• Forced migration, displacement, deportation
• Critical approaches to the state, nationalism and nation building
• Atlantic Geopolitics
• Constructions of race, ethnicity, and nationalism
Additional activities
• Migration and sports
• Applied anthropology for social and racial equity, social welfare, and humanitarian ends
• Early Modern Atlantic seafaring texts
• Bibliology of the Azores and the Atlantic
• Material culture, rituals, intangible cultural patrimony
• Visual anthropology
Personal
I was raised in a community on Cape Cod, Massachusetts founded and built by Azorean and Cape Verdean migrant farm workers and construction laborers. In the US I have lived in Providence, RI; Boston, Fall River, MA; New York, NY; across Connecticut and in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.
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I started living in Portugal on-and-off beginning in the mid-1990s (mostly in the Azores on my family's island of São Miguel and also Terceira). But after first visiting Lisbon in 1989, the city put the zap on me, and I returned frequently, moving here permanently in 2005. In Europe I have also
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lived in Germany as well as in Snowdonia, in north Wales.
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On the Cape, I worked laying concrete foundations in my family's masonry business, a job I held during and after college. An undergraduate anthropology honors thesis studying the Azorean crew I worked with and the Espírito Santo Festival they put on every summer in my town, led to a life time of learning and research about migrant communities and the histories and challenges in the places of my greatest affection in New England, Portugal, and other connected geographies.
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Upcoming/Recent talks & Events
Conference Paper and Panel
Association for Spanish & Portuguese Studies
Paper:
Portuguese National Churches in North America: Estado Novo Influence, Soft Diplomacy, and Immigrant organization through the Catholic Church
Panel:
State Authority, Soft Diplomacy, and Collective Organization among Immigrant Communities from Portugal in North America: the Estado Novo, the Portuguese Church, and Associativism
Universidade de Lisboa
8-12 July
Conference Paper
European Association of Social Anthropology
Doing and Undoing with Anthropology
Immigrant Museums, Heritage Sites, and the Local Politics of Memorialization: competing and complementary aims of activists, agents of cultural diplomacy, and who decides how the past is narrated.
Lisbon, Portugal
Universidade de Barcelona
23-26 July
