Biography

Vera Marques Alves is an anthropologist. She studied the nationalist uses of popular art in the Estado Novo, the subject of her PhD thesis (2008). She was an Invited Assistant Professor at the University of Coimbra (2011-2015), where she taught several subjects in the degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology and in the Master’s in Anthropology.

She is the author of Arte Popular e Nação no Estado Novo. A Política Folclorista do Secretariado da Propaganda Nacional [Popular Art and Nation in the Estado Novo. The Folklorist Policy of the Secretariat of National Propaganda] (ICS) and several articles in scientific journals and academic books. In recent years, she has conducted research on the relationship between the cult of popular art and modernist movements. In this context, he wrote “Portuguese Rural Traditions as cultural exports. How Modernism and Transnational Connections Shaped the New State’s Folklore Politics” (in Music and the Making of Portugal and Spain, University of Illinois Press, 2023).

Research fields

• Nationalism, modernism, and popular art
• Anthropological museums and collections
• History of Anthropology
• Construction of otherness

Selected publications

• Alves, Vera Marques, “Portugal rural traditions as cultural exports. How Modernism and Transnational Connections Shaped the New State’s Folklore Politics,” in Music and the Making of Portugal and Spain: Nationalism and Identity Politics in the Iberian Peninsula, edited by Matthew Machin-Autenrieth, Salwa el-Shawan Castelo-Branco e Samuel Llano. Champaign: University of Illinois, 2023. [link]
• Alves, Vera Marques. Arte Popular e Nação no Estado Novo: A Política Folclorista do Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional. Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2013. [link]
• Alves, Vera Marques, “O povo do Estado Novo,” in Como Se Faz Um Povo. Ensaios em História Contemporânea de Portugal, coordinated by José Neves, 183-194. Lisbon: Tinta da China / Fundação EDP, 2010. [link]

Main projects

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