Biography

Rui Cunha Martins is Professor at the University of Coimbra (DHEEAA) and collaborator of several Brazilian institutions, where he carries out research and teaching functions in the area of contemporary studies from a cross-mobilisation of History, Law, Aesthetics and Politics. Among his main areas of study — gradually structured around the problematic of the “contemporary” — are: the question of the aesthetics of change and transitional and memorial modalities; the problematic of the border and the limit in the political and digital horizon; the procedural regimes of evidence, decision, and criticism; and the tension between norm, instinct, and expectation in the context of the intersystemicity of the communicational and legal arenas; lines, therefore, of manifest transdiciplinary confluence. In these areas he has supervised several doctoral, post-doctoral and master’s dissertations.

He is an Integrated Researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History of NOVA University Lisbon, as well as a member of the Ius Gentium Conimbrigae (integrating the respective Board of Directors, coordinating the Luso-Brazilian Academic Relations). He is also a member of the Coordination and Scientific Committee of the Post-Doctoral Course in Democracy and Human Rights at the University of Coimbra.

Research fields

• Theory of the contemporary
• Transitional justice and the politics of memory
• Historiography
• Contemporary history

Selected publications

• Martins, Rui Cunha. O Ponto Cego do Direito: The Brazilian Lessons. 3ª Edição. São Paulo: Atlas, 2013.
• Martins, Rui Cunha (Coord.). Portugal 1974: transição política em perspectiva histórica. Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra, 2011. [link]
• Martins, Rui Cunha. O Método da Fronteira – Radiografia Histórica de um Dispositivo Contemporâneo (Matrizes Ibéricas e Americanas). Coimbra: Almedina, 2008. [link]

Main projects

• Researcher in the project “A matriz oculta da Violência na Modernidade: Crise da Alteridade, da Moral e da Ética” [The Hidden Matrix of Violence in Modernity: Crisis of Alterity, Morality and Ethics] — Coordinated by José Carlos Moreira Filho (PUCRS) and funded by CAPES (Brazil). [link]
• Researcher in the project “Memória, Escrita da História e Cultura Política no Mundo Contemporâneo” [Memory, History Writing and Political Culture in the Contemporary World] — Coordinated by Jacqueline Hermann (UFRJ) and Fernando Catroga (CHSC — University of Coimbra), and funde by CAPES (Brazil) and the Foundation for Science and Technology (Portugal).