Biography

Marta Macedo is, since September 2022, researcher at Institute of Contemporary History, NOVA University Lisbon. She has a degree in Architecture and a PhD in Architecture (Theory and History) from the University of Coimbra (2010). Previously, she was a researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon (ERC project The Colour of Labour: the Racialized Lives of Migrants), she held a postdoctoral position at the CIUHCT, University of Lisbon and was visiting scholar at the University of California – Los Angeles.

Her current research project, São Tomé and the Global Atlantic: a genealogy for the Plantationocene, focuses on the relation between techno-scientific practices and imperial history in the longue durée. More specifically she examines the circulation of plantation systems (São Tomé, Brazil, Angola, Belgium Congo and Cameroon), combining approaches from history of science and technology, labor history, environmental and the history of capitalism.

Research fields

• History of science and technology
• Plantations and colonialism
• Labour history
• Environmental history

Selected publications

• Le Petitcorps, Colette, Marta Macedo & Irene Peano (Eds.). Global Plantations in the Modern World. Sovereignties, Ecologies, Afterlives. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. [link]
• Macedo, Marta. “Coffee on the move: technology, labour and race in the making of a transatlantic plantation system,” Mobilities 16 (2021): 262-272. [PDF]
• Macedo, Marta. “Standard Cocoa: Transnational Networks and Technoscientific Regimes in West African Plantations,” Technology and Culture 57 (2016): 557-585. [link]
• Macedo, Marta. Projectar e Construir a Nação. Engenheiros, Ciência e Território em Portugal no Século XIX. Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2012. [link]

Main projects

• Researcher in the project “The Colour of Labour: the Racialized Lives of Migrants” — Coordinated by Cristiana Bastos (ICS — Universidade de Lisboa) and funded by the European Research Council (Advanced Grant No 695573). 2016-2022 [link]
• Researcher in the project “Visions of Lisbon — Science, technology and medicine (STM) and the making of a techno-scientific capital (1870-1940)” — Coordinated by Ana Simões (CIUHCT) and funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (PTDC/IVC-HFC/3122/2014). [link]
• Researcher in the project “Anthropolands – Engineering the Anthropocene: Colonial Science, Technology and Medicine and the changing of the African landscape.” — Coordinated by Maria Paula Diogo (CIUHCT) and funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (PTDC/IVC-HFC/6789/2014). 2016-2018 [link]