Faculty

(Faculty includes core faculty and faculty visiting* in the current academic year.)

Nuno Amado

Assistant Professor. PhD Universidade de Lisboa

nunoamado[at]campus.ul.pt

Holds degrees from the Universidade de Lisboa (BA, 2005; MA, 2008; PhD, 2016), where he is also affiliated with the Romance Literatures Department. He has previously taught at the Catholic University, Lisbon. His interests include literary criticism, Fernando Pessoa and 19th-20th Century literature. He is the author of Os Anos da Vida de Ricardo Reis (1887-1936) and the editor of a Fernando Pessoa anthology, Toda uma literatura (2022).

Carlo Arrigoni

Assistant Professor. PhD Columbia University

carloarrigoni[at]edu.ulisboa.pt

Holds degrees from the Università degli Studi di Siena (BA, 2010), the Universidade de Lisboa (MA, 2013), and Columbia University (PhD, 2021). At the Universidade de Lisboa, he is also affiliated with the Romance Literatures Department. He taught Italian literature and cinema at Columbia University and at the University of Oklahoma. His interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and the history and theory of the novel. He is currently working on a book on European and American Naturalism.

Alberto Arruda

Brett Bourbon

bourbon[at]udallas.edu

Holds degrees from the University of California, Berkeley (BA, 1985) and Davis (MA, 1990), and from Harvard University (PhD, 1996). Since 2000 he has frequently lectured in the Program, where he also was the Fulbright Visiting Scholar in 2002/3. He serves on the Advisory Board of our journal, Forma de Vida.  His main interests include medieval theology, Joyce, Wittgenstein, the philosophy of language, and moral philosophy. He is the author of Finding a Replacement for the Soul (2004) Everyday Poetics and Jane Austen and the Ethics of Description (both from 2022), and Thinking with Words, with Miguel Tamen (2025). His next book, with Renita Murimi, is also due in 2025.

João R. Figueiredo, Director of Graduate Studies

Senior Associate Professor. PhD Universidade de Lisboa.

jfigueiredo1[at]campus.ul.pt

Holds degrees from the Universidade de Lisboa (BA, 1995; MA, 2000; PhD, 2006; Agregação, 2023), where he is also affiliated with the Romance Literatures Department. He serves on the Editorial Board of our journal, Forma de Vida.  His interests include aesthetics, art history, Italian Studies, and Renaissance literature. He is the author of A Autocomplacência da Mimese (2003), was recently (2020) one of the co-editors of O Cânone, and is the author of several essays on Camões. He is currently preparing a commentary edition of Camões' Os Lusíadas and writing a long essay on Guido Reni.

Joana Matos Frias

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht

Regular Visiting Faculty. Albert Guérard Professor of Literature, Emeritus, Stanford University.  PhD Universität Konstanz.

sepp[at]stanford.edu

Has studied at the Universities of Munich, Regensburg, Salamanca and Konstanz, wherefrom he holds his PhD (1971) and wherein he obtained his Habilitation (1974). Since 1996 he has frequently lectured in the Program, where he also was Visiting Professor in 1995/6 and 2005/6. Has received an honorary degree from the University of Lisbon (2009). He serves on the Advisory Board of our journal, Forma de Vida.   Although trained as a Medievalist, his interests include the history of ideas in the 20th Century, aesthetics, and the history of transatlantic cultural relationships and tensions since the 18th Century. He is the author of numerous books, among which In 1926 (1997), The Powers of Philology (2003), Production of Presence (2004), Stimmungen Lesen (2011), Nach 1945. Latenz als Ursprung der Gegenwart (2012)  Prose of the World.  Denis Diderot and the Periphery of Enlightenment (2021) and Provinz (2021). His next book, due in the spring, will be Lives of the Voice. An Essay on Closeness. He is a regular contributor to German and Swiss newspapers.

Fotini Hadjittofi

Assistant Professor. PhD University of Cambridge

f.hadjittofi[at]campus.ul.pt

Holds degrees from the University of Cyprus (BA, 2004) and the University of Cambridge (MPhil, 2005; PhD, 2010) and teaches in the Classics Department at the University of Lisbon.  Her interests include epic poetry, the Late Antiquity, and Hellenistic Poetry.   She has written on Homer, Choricius of Gaza, and  Nonnus of Panopolis, and has translated into English Nonnus’ paraphrase of John’s Gospel.

José Maria Vieira Mendes

Assistant Professor.  PhD Universidade de Lisboa.

joseantunes[at]campus.ul.pt

Holds degrees from the Universidade de Lisboa (BA, 1999, PhD, 2016). He is also affiliated with the German Departament and the Program in Theatre Studies. His interests include the performing arts, contemporary art, theatre studies, culture studies and feminist studies, among other things.  He is the author of  Uma coisa não é outra coisa (2016, second revised edition in press) and several books of plays and fiction. He previously taught at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and at the School of Drama, at the Lisbon Polytechnic Institute.  Hew is one of the artistic directors of Teatro Praga. 

Maria Sequeira Mendes (on leave, 2024/25)

Senior Assistant Professor.  PhD Universidade de Lisboa.

mariafmendes[at]campus.ul.pt

Holds degrees from the Catholic University, Lisbon (BA, 2000) and the University of Lisbon (MA, 2005; PhD, 2012; Agregação, 2023), where she is also a member of the English Department.   Between 2005 and 2017 she taught at the School of Drama, at the Lisbon Polytechnic Institute.  She was Beaufort Visiting Scholar at St John’s, University of Cambridge.  Her interests include literary criticism, law and literature, Shakespeare and drama.   Her first book The Ordeals of Interpretation appeared in 2020.  She is working on a second book, on Shakespeare and flattery.

Chiara Nifosi

Assistant Professor. PhD University of Chicago

nifosi[at]edu.ulisboa.pt

Holds degrees from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan (BA, 2011; MA, 2013) and the University of Chicago (PhD, 2020). After a two-year postdoc at UChicago, she joined the Department of Romance Literatures at the Universidade de Lisboa. A specialist of Marcel Proust, her interests in the field of French studies include avant-garde and modernist culture, poetry from symbolism to WWII, gender and sexuality studies, and the history of social sciences. She is currently working on her first monograph, Le Paysage et la carte. Pour une nouvelle rhétorique de l’espace chez Proust. She is the co-editor of the online journal Nouvelle Fribourg (www.nouvelle-fribourg.com).

Rita Patrício

Associate Professor. PhD Universidade do Minho.

rpatricio[at]letras.ulisboa.pt

Holds degrees from the Universidade de Lisboa (BA,1994) and Universidade do Minho (MA, 2000; PhD, 2009). She is also affiliated with the Romance Literatures Department.  Her interests include Modern and Contemporary Portuguese literature. She is the author of Episódios. Da teorização estética em Fernando Pessoa (2012) and Apontamentos. Pessoa, Nemésio, Drummond (2016); she has co-edited As conferências do cinquentenário. A teoria da literatura de Vítor Aguiar e Silva (2020).

Miguel Ramalhete Gomes

Senior Associate Professor. PhD Universidade do Porto.

mgomes[at]letras.ulisboa.pt

Holds degrees from the Universidade do Porto (BA, 2006; PhD, 2011) and the University of Lisbon (Agregação, 2023). He is also affiliated with the English Department.  His interests include the English Renaissance drama, mostly Shakespeare, and also utopian studies, Irish studies and comics. He is the author of Texts Waiting for History: William Shakespeare Re-Imagined by Heiner Müller (2014) and is co-editor, with Jorge Bastos da Silva, of English Literature and the Disciplines of Knowledge, Early Modern to Eighteenth Century (2017) and, with Teresa Botelho and José Eduardo Reis, Utopian Foodways: Critical Essays (2019).  He is woking on a book on the uses of Shakespeare during the austerity period in Portugal.

Miguel Tamen, Chair.

Professor. PhD University of Minnesota.

mtamen[at]letras.ulisboa.pt

Holds degrees from the Universidade de Lisboa (BA, 1982; MA, 1985; "Agregação", 1995) and from the University of Minnesota (PhD, 1989). At the University of Lisbon, he is also affiliated with the Romance Literatures Department. Between 2000 and 2014 he held a visiting appointment at the University of Chicago; he also was a senior fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center (2003/4) and at the National Humanities Center (2010/11). He serves on the Editorial Board of our journal, Forma de Vida.  His main interests include philosophy and literature. Has written eleven books, among which Friends of Interpretable Objects (2001), What Art Is Like, In Constant Reference to the Alice Books (2012), Closeness (2021), and Thinking with Words, with Brett Bourbon (2025); he was (2020) one of the editors of O Cânone.