The LOCUS group develops research into the practice and theory of spaces, places, landscapes and borders. It includes the following projects: CILM-Cidade e (In)segurança na Literatura e nos Média; DIIA-Diálogos Ibéricos e Ibero-Americanos; Orientalismo Português; Playing Identities and Viagem e Utopia. [coord. Susana Araújo]

It aims to accommodate and enable synergies between existing projects and to promote new research on the historical, social and material construction of space and the relationship between place(s) and culture(s). Particular attention will be given to the literary and cultural representations of place not only as dwelling and milieu but also as crossed territory and transfer site open to comparative perspectives, where themes and motifs such as travelling, mobility, migrations and displacements can be studied and examined.

Some of our ongoing projects examine the way nationality and transnationality shape the everyday experience of place and culture while others focus on the ways globalization and¬ cosmopolitanism shape cultural and aesthetic cartographies. Drawing on recent interdisciplinary developments in urban studies and landscapes we will continue to explore how social, political and economical formations emerging in contemporary cities are forged and represented. Despite the tendency in current debates about postmodernism to privilege issues of spatiality over questions of temporality, the creation of this group depends on the presupposition that time and space cannot, and should not, be disconnected. The (re)presentation of spaces and places has a crucial an impact on temporality, and it is therefore important to understand how urban and non-urban spaces often memorialize, celebrate and politicize history.

This group was recently created due to the groups’ restructuring following the appointment of new researchers (Ciência 2007 e Ciência 2008) and the subsequent development of new collaborations and projects. This reorganization was guided by the feedback of the international advisory board. The emergence of this group aims , thus, to encourage new projects and to create synergies between following projects:

• UTOPIA,
• ORIENTALISMOS,
• DIIA,
• CILM/(IN)SECURITIES.