On 25 May, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences will dedicate a day to the historical and scientific context of Armando de Lacerda’s work in the 1930s, an investigation that was initiated by Quintino Lopes at the IHC.

Quintino Lopes “came across” the Experimental Phonetics Laboratory of the University of Coimbra and its creator, Armando de Lacerda, when he was developing his master’s degree, also touching on the subject during his doctoral research on the National Education Board, which funded science in Portugal during the Estado Novo. But it was after his doctorate that he dedicated himself fully to studying the pioneering work of Armando de Lacerda, a professor, scientist, inventor, and experimentalist who set up a laboratory “for the scientific study of the Portuguese language” in Coimbra, which became a world reference, with a vast international network of collaborations.

Part of this work has already been published in the book “Uma Periferia Global: Armando de Lacerda e o Laboratório de Fonética Experimental de Coimbra (1936-1979)” (Caleidoscópio, 2021), which shows how, in the rooms of that laboratory, scientists from the universities of Harvard, Paris, Cambridge, Bonn, Texas, Toulouse, Milan, Salvador da Bahia, Madrid, Accra, Uppsala, Oslo, Rio de Janeiro, Barcelona, and Edinburgh investigated and specialised in the innovative instruments and research methods created by its director.

The English edition of this book will now be launched in Stockholm, published by the Center for History of Science of The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: “The Global Periphery: Armando de Lacerda and the Coimbra Experimental Phonetics Laboratory (1936-1979)“. The launch will be the culmination of the symposium “Armando de Lacerda: A pioneer of Experimental Phonetics“, organized by the aforementioned Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, with the support of Sven och Dagmar Saléns Stiftelse, The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History, and Antiquities and the Camões Institute. Quintino Lopes is one of the invited speakers, among a group of researchers from several European countries.

Picture: Quintino Lopes (left) and Armando de Lacerda (right).