Colóquio Live
The Art of Criticism
Event Slider
Date
- 09:30 / Cancelled 09:30 / Sold out Friday, 09:30
- 10:00 / Cancelled 10:00 / Sold out Saturday, 10:00
Location
Auditorium 2 Calouste Gulbenkian FoundationPricing
- Free entry
Subject to room capacity
As part of the celebrations marking the Foundation’s 70th anniversary, Colóquio magazine is hosting its first in-person event dedicated to reflecting on literary criticism, essay writing and the role of cultural magazines in contemporary debate.
The main aims of this event are to celebrate the Colóquio magazine’s long history and to foster discussion on the practice of literary criticism as it has been carried out in recent times in the world’s leading magazines and newspapers, whether in print, digital formats or specialised podcasts.
Over the course of two days, the programme will bring together a number of leading writers and critics for round-table discussions, talks and lectures. The first day of the colloquium closes with a concert.
The event will be held in Portuguese, English and French, with simultaneous interpretation. It will be livestreamed (without interpretation) on this page.
Publications
Speakers
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Ana Paula Tavares
Historian. She holds a Master’s degree in Brazilian Literature and African Literatures in the Portuguese Language, and a PhD in the Anthropology of History. Co-ordinator of the research group on African Cultures and Literatures in the Portuguese Language at the Centre for Lusophone and European Literatures and Cultures, she also collaborates with the National Historical Archive of Angola and with RDP-África. Best known as a poet, she has published several studies on the history and literature of Angola and features in various international poetry anthologies.
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André Petry
Journalist. He began his career in journalism in the 1980s. He worked as a reporter for the Diário Popular in Rio Grande do Sul, his home state. After three years, he moved to Brasília, where he worked as international editor of the Correio Braziliense, the capital’s leading daily newspaper. In the 1990s, he joined Veja, Brazil’s largest weekly magazine. He served as political editor, head of the Brasília bureau, political columnist for four years and correspondent in New York. In 2016, he took over as editor-in-chief of the magazine. In 2020, he became editor-in-chief of piauí magazine, a position he still holds today.
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António Araújo
He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Public Law from the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon and a PhD in Contemporary History from the Portuguese Catholic University. An adviser to the Constitutional Court, he served as a political adviser to Presidents Aníbal Cavaco Silva and Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. He is an executive director and director of publications at the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation, a trustee of the Casa de Mateus Foundation and a member of the board of the Portuguese Centre for Foundations. Author of more than 20 books on Constitutional Law, Political Science, and Political and Cultural History, the most recent of which is Portugal Refractário – Um país entre o imobilismo e a mudança (2026), co-authored with the photographer Duarte Belo.
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António de Castro Caeiro
A lecturer in Ancient and Contemporary Philosophy at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, he organises seminars on translation from Greek, Latin and German. He has been a visiting scholar at Albert Ludwig Universität (Germany), the University of São Paulo (Brazil), the University of South Florida (USA) and Oriel College, University of Oxford (United Kingdom). He has translated Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (7th edition; 1st ed. 2004) and is the author of the books O que é a filosofia? (Tinta-da-China, 2023), which won the 2024 Essay Prize from the Portuguese Society of Philosophy, and Sobre os Sentimentos (Tinta-da-China, 2026). He runs public courses at the CCB, such as O que é a filosofia?, Sobre os Sentimentos and A Verdade da Mentira, with podcasts available on Spotify.
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António M. Feijó
President of the Board of Trustees of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation since May 2022 and Professor Emeritus at the University of Lisbon, where he was Director of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. He was Vice-Rector and Pro-Rector of the University, Director of the University Press and its magazine. He is the author of several books and essays on English, American and Portuguese literature, as well as translations and plays.
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Brian Dillon
His books include Ambivalence, Affinities, Essayism, The Great Explosion (shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize), Objects in This Mirror: Essays, I Am Sitting in a Room, Sanctuary, Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize) and In the Dark Room, which won the Irish Book Award for non-fiction. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, London Review of Books, the New Yorker, New York Review of Books, frieze and Artforum. He has curated exhibitions for Tate and Hayward galleries.
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Carlos Vaz Marques
Journalist, editor, translator, writer. He studied Modern Languages and Literature – specialising in Portuguese and French – at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. He began his career in journalism on the editorial team of JL — Jornal de Letras, Artes e Ideias, and also worked on the editorial team of the weekly newspaper O Jornal. He was a member of the TSF editorial team from 1990 to 2021. She has contributed to various newspapers and magazines, including DNa, Ler, JL, Visão, Pública, Focus, Grande Reportagem and Elle. She currently runs the publishing house Zigurate, coordinates the Travel Literature collection at Tinta-da-China and hosts O Programa Cujo Nome Estamos Legalmente Impedidos de Dizer.
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Clare Bucknell
Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. She is the author of The Treasuries: Poetry Anthologies and the Making of British Culture (2023). Her essays and reviews have appeared in the London Review of Books, where she is a Contributing Editor, the New York Review of Books, Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker, Granta, and Apollo. She is the co-host of two Close Readings podcasts for the LRB, ‘On Satire’ and ‘Novel Approaches’.
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Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida
Writer. Her books—notably Três Histórias de Esquecimento, Toda a ferida é uma beleza and Livro da Doença—have been published in 17 countries. She has received the Oceanos Prize and the APE Grand Prize for Novels and Short Stories, amongst numerous other honours. She has written for various publications, including serrote, Folha de S.Paulo, The New York Times, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Common Knowledge, Granta, Lit Hub, Words Without Borders, Brotéria, Contemporânea, la Repubblica, amongst many others. She is a columnist for Observador, Quatro Cinco Um and ZUM, the photography magazine of the Moreira Salles Institute.
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Gareth Evans
Writer, editor, film / event producer, creative consultant and host / presenter. He works on special projects for the London Review of Books and curates / hosts their ‘Screen at Home’ series. He co-curates / hosts talks at the Southbank Centre’s Poetry International and the annual Suffolk festivals First Light and Flipside. Recent guests there and in London include Raymond Antrobus, Ronan Bennett, Patrick Grant, Samantha Harvey, Jeremy Irons, Ilya Kaminsky, Kim Hyesoon, Stewart Lee, Paul Muldoon and Colin Thubron.
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Gladys Marivat
French journalist with a degree in Literature, Political Science and Journalism. Since 2008, she has been working in radio, television and the print media, notably for Lire Magazine and the newspaper Le Monde des Livres, for which she covers, in particular, literature from the African continent and its diasporas, as well as the Portuguese-speaking world. Having previously worked as a programme coordinator at the ‘Livre Paris’ book fair and the Geneva Book Fair, she is currently in charge of the literature and cinema programme at the Palais de la Porte Dorée – National Museum of the History of Immigration, in Paris.
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Isabel Pires de Lima
Professor emerita at the University of Porto, she is a researcher in the fields of Portuguese and Comparative Literature and Interartistic Studies. With a degree in Romance Philology and a PhD in Portuguese Literature, she has devoted her academic career to literary studies focusing on classical and contemporary authors. She is a specialist in the work of Eça de Queirós. The author of several publications, she curated the exhibition ‘Tudo o que tenho no saco’: Eça and Os Maias, at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. She has served on the judging panels for various literary prizes, including the Camões Prize. In addition, she has served on the boards of directors of institutions such as the Eça de Queirós Foundation and the Serralves Foundation. She was a Member of the Assembly of the Republic and served on the National Council for Education. She was Minister for Culture in the 17th Constitutional Government.
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James Elkins
BA in English and Art History, MFA in painting, and then art history, PhD in Art History. He is a lecturer in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent books include What Photography Is, written against Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida; Artists with PhDs, second edition; and Art Critiques: A Guide, third edition.
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Joana Matos Frias
Professor of Literature at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon – where she also holds the position of Director of the Department of Romance Literatures – and member of the Estranhar Pessoa Project. Her critical activity has been divided among a large number of creators, especially Portuguese and Brazilian. Among her published books of essays, O Murmúrio das Imagens (2 vols., 2018) and Oscilações (poetry in every sense), from 2023, stand out. Since June 2025, she has been the director of Colóquio magazine.
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João Moreira Salles
Documentary filmmaker and founder of piauí magazine. His works include, amongst others, Notícias de uma guerra particular, Santiago, Nelson Freire and No intenso agora. More recently, he published Arrabalde, a series of seven reports on his time in the Amazon, and, in collaboration with the Lakapoy collective and Louise Botkay, he directed the documentary Minha Terra Estrangeira.
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José Manuel dos Santos
Writer, curator and cultural manager. An author of poetry, fiction and essays, he is editor-in-chief of Electra magazine. A member of the boards of directors of the EDP Foundation and the Arpad Szenes-Vieira da Silva Foundation, he is director of the Lisbon Architecture Triennale. He sits on the editorial board of the National Press and the board of curators of the National Museum of Ancient Art. He is a full member of the National Academy of Fine Arts. He was director of the Museum of Electricity, a trustee of Casa da Música and cultural adviser to the Presidents of the Republic Mário Soares and Jorge Sampaio. He also served on the organising committees for the centenary celebrations of Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, Mário Cesariny and Mário Soares. He contributes regularly to the media.
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Maria Filomena Molder
Retired lecturer at Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Her philosophical interests focus on aesthetic issues relating to poetry and art. From the outset, she has sought to demonstrate the richness that aesthetic questions offer in understanding what philosophy might be.
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Maria Reis
Co-founder of the collective and label Cafetra, Maria Reis showed an innate talent for songwriting from a very early age, particularly with the band Pega Monstro. Following the band’s hiatus in 2018, she has been working as a solo artist. Following her debut EP—Maria—released in 2017, it was in 2019 that she truly launched her solo career with the release of the acclaimed Chove na Sala, Água nos Olhos. Two years later, following a series of live performances, she recorded Flor da Urtiga, produced by Noah Lennox, also known as Panda Bear. Benefício da Dúvida, released in 2022, features a more stripped-back production, based on simple arrangements, and includes a guest appearance by her sister Júlia, with production by Leonardo Bindilatti. Maria Reis returns to the studio with Suspiro…, an album created in close collaboration with Tomé Silva, recorded in the intimacy of her bedroom.
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Mariana Pinto dos Santos
Art historian and curator. She is a researcher and deputy director of the Institute of Art History, and a lecturer in the Department of Art History at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of NOVA University Lisbon (NOVA FCSH). She is a member of the Governing Board of the IN2PAST Associated Laboratory. She coordinates the Almada Negreiros – Sarah Affonso Centre for Studies and Documentation at NOVA FCSH and is editor of Edições do Saguão.
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Miguel Esteves Cardoso
He obtained his degree and PhD in political philosophy at the University of Manchester. He then moved to the Institute of Social Sciences, where he worked as a researcher. In 1988, he left academia and launched O Independente with Paulo Portas. He studied at Oxford under Derek Parfit. He began writing for newspapers in 1975. He has been writing a daily column in Público since 2009. He published his first books in the early 1980s: Escrítica Pop and A Causa das Coisas. His most recent works are Afinal o apocalipse não é para já (2026) and Como escrever (2024).
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Miguel Magalhães
Director of the Gulbenkian Cultura Programme at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation since 2021. He holds a degree in Law (Portuguese Catholic University, Porto), a Master’s in Arts Management (City University, London) and completed the Advanced Management Programme at the INSEAD business school (Fontainebleau, France). He began his professional career at the Teatro Nacional de S. João, where he served as an adviser to the administrative and financial management team, and was artistic director of the Casino da Póvoa. He has been working with the Gulbenkian Foundation since 2005, where he served as assistant director on the programmes Estado do Mundo, Distância e Proximidade and Próximo Futuro. He was based at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Delegation in France between 2011 and 2021, serving as director from 2017 onwards.
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Miguel Tamen
Director of the Gulbenkian Institute for Advanced Study and Professor of Literary Theory at the University of Lisbon. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Minnesota and a BA in Modern Languages and Literatures, from the University of Lisbon. He has held a number of visiting positions and fellowships, namely at the National Humanities Center, at the Stanford Humanities Center, at Stanford University, and at the University of Chicago. He was also Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon.
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Norma Clarke
Emeritus Professor (Kingston University London) has published widely in various genres: literary history, biography, memoir, fiction. Always keen to reach a wide readership she reviews regularly for the Times Literary Supplement and the Literary Review as well as writing for other journals.
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Olivia Elkaim
A journalist and author of several critically acclaimed novels and short stories. Her work weaves together personal history, family memory and the upheavals of history. Her writing, which is demanding yet accessible, explores the themes of transmission and identity. Her career as a journalist lends her writing a unique perspective on reality. She is a regular guest at literary festivals and events dedicated to contemporary literature. Her latest novel, published in 2026, depicted the life of the writer Georges Perec’s mother and was entitled The Disappearance of Things.
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Paulo Werneck
Founder and editor-in-chief of Quatro Cinco Um magazine and presenter of the 451 MHz podcast. A book editor, literary translator and journalist, he was a curator at Flip between 2014 and 2016 and editor of the Ilustríssima supplement for Folha de S.Paulo between 2010 and 2013. He is one of the founders and organisers of ‘A Feira do Livro’, a literary festival held in São Paulo.
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Raphaëlle Leyris
She studied classics and journalism before beginning her career as a journalist—for Paris Match magazine—and as a literary critic—for Les Inrockuptibles magazine—in 2003. After a brief stint in women’s magazines, she was hired by Le Monde in 2011 as deputy editor-in-chief specialising in literature (both French and translated) for the weekly literary supplement Le Monde des livres. She held this position until 2023, when she asked to step back from the managerial and organisational aspects of her work in order to devote herself to reading and writing.
Programme
09:30 / Opening
10:00 / Affinities and Essayism
Presentation by Miguel Tamen
— Coffee break 15 min —11:15 / Ways of reading
Moderation
— Lunch break 90 min —14:30 / Ways of writing
15:30 / Ways of thinking
— Coffee break 30 min —17:00 / La Disparition des Choses
Presentation by Miguel Magalhães
18:30 / Ways of listening
10:00 / Ways of seeing
— Coffee break 30 min —11:30 / About looking: John Berger X 100
Presentation by Gareth Evans
— Lunch break 120 min —15:00 / Colóquio News
15:30 / Conceição Lima, in memoriam
— Coffee break 15 min —16:30 / Ways of saying
Moderation
— Coffee break 30 min —18:30 / Ways of teasing
The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation reserves the right to collect and keep records of images, sounds and voice for the diffusion and preservation of the memory of its cultural and artistic activity. For further information, please contact us through the Information Request form.