Joana Gaspar de Freitas is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Literature and Tradition – Heritages, Arts, and Cultures (IELT) of Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa. She has a postdoctoral fellowship from the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) and is a collaborative member of the History Center of the Universidade de Lisboa (CH-FLUL). She received her PhD in Contemporary History in 2011 from the Universidade de Lisboa with a thesis about the perceptions, uses, and consequences of human occupancy of the Portuguese coasts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She belongs to an interdisciplinary network of Portuguese-Brazilian researchers (BRASPOR) working on the margins of the Atlantic. Her research focuses on the environmental history of coastal zones in Portugal, Brazil, Angola, and Mozambique. She is interested in human/coastal environments interactions and their consequences, risks, and vulnerabilities; ecological traditional knowledge; tangible and intangible heritages; the transformation of landscapes; and integrated coastal zones management.
RCC Research Project: Against the Sand and the Sea: Dune Intervention in Coastal Defense Strategies
Lunchtime Colloquium Video - Against the Sand and the Sea: The Dunes in Coastal Defense Strategies
Selected Publications:
- Formação e Ocupação de Litorais nas margens do Atlântico – Brasil/Portugal. Rio de Janeiro: Corbã Editora e Artes Gráficas Lda., 2014. (co-edited with Sílvia Dias Pereira, Sérgio Bergamaschi, and M. Antonieta Rodrigues).
- "Paisagens simbólicas do litoral: antigas leituras, novas tradições." In Entre Margens e Centros: Textos e Práticas das novas Interculturas, edited by Clara Sarmento, 165–182. Porto: Afrontamento, 2013.
- "1941 Windstorm Effects on the Portuguese Coast: What Lessons for the Future?" Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue 65 (2013): 714–9. (co-authored with João Alveirinho Dias)
- "Praia da Rocha (Algarve, Portugal): um paradigma da antropização do litoral." Revista de Gestão Costeira Integrada, 12 (2012): 31–42. (co-authored with João Alveirinho Dias).
- "Episodes of Coastal Erosion in the Second Half of the XIX Century and it's Relation with the Development of the Coast for Bathing Use – the Cases of Espinho, Nazaré and Ericeira." Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue 56 (2009): 622–6.