Biography

Scholar of the Foundation for Science and Technology enrolled in the PhD Programme in History, specialization in Contemporary History, at NOVA FCSH, and researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History.

Her thesis project focuses on the role of independent and amateur publishing, specifically the gay and lesbian press, in the forms of LGBTI+ culture and the structuring of its political expressions in the post-April 25 Portuguese context, in order to make queer contemporary history in Portugal and its transnational dimension visible.

She holds a BA in Asian Studies from FLUL and an MA in Gender Studies from the University of Paris 8. In her MA thesis, she worked on contemporary sinophone literature with attention to the challenges of the transnationality of queer theory in the contexts of China and Taiwan.

She was part of the organisation of GenLab: Contemporary History Laboratory dedicated to research in Gender Studies and is part of the organisation of Quir Hub (Queer Intersectional/Interdisciplinary Research Hub) at FLUL’s Centre for Comparative Studies.

Research fields

• Queer theory
• Cultural studies
• History of gender and sexualities

Selected publications

• Matias, Joana. “Cravos cor-de-rosa: notas para o lugar das dissidências sexuais e de género na história da Revolução.” Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais 133 (2024): 35–50. [link] 🔓
• Matias, Joana, ““Quentes da capital”: Portraits of a Changing Lisbon in the Gay and Lesbian Press of the 1980s and 1990s,” in Sexualities and Leisure, organised by Maria Manuel Baptista, Rui Alexandre Grácio, Renata Castelo Branco Araujo, Thaís Azevedo and Francisco Welligton Barbosa Jr, 323–343. Coimbra: Grácio Editor, 2022. [link] 🔓

Main projects

• “Arquivo reparativo: publicações independentes e a historiografia queer portuguesa” — PhD thesis to be presented to the NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities, supervised by Rita Luís (IHC — University of Évora) and Matt Cook (University of Oxford). Individual PhD project funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (SFRH/BD/08446/2020). 2020-