The EMPIRES Research Group researches the past and present significance of imperial and colonial formations in the Portuguese-speaking world. It adopts a critical, comparative, and long-term perspective in the study of the Portuguese Empire and its legacies in Lusophone countries and beyond. EMPIRES is distinctive for its cross-disciplinary combination of History and Anthropology, historiography and ethnographic theory. It results from the collaboration of an interdisciplinary team of social anthropologists and early modern and contemporary historians, specializing in Lusophone Asian, African and Latin American contexts.

The research group focuses on studying of 5 core themes:

• Government and power: political and economic forms of government; urban governance; space and land rights; violence and conflict; anti-colonial criticism and resistance;
• Knowledge, science and belief: forms of knowledge (colonial, indigenous, scientific); archives, exhibitions and museums; cultural meetings; religious conversion; appropriations of Christianity;
• Identity, difference and inclusion: dynamics of identity and difference; gender; law, justice and citizenship; racism and inequality in a colonial/post-colonial context;
• Work and exchanges: work and slavery; diasporas and returnees; capital and labor; markets; environment and colonial exploitation of natural resources;
• Memory and legacies: remembering and forgetting colonial and imperial experiences; colonial memory in contemporary societies; indigenous historicities.