BIOGRAPHY
Miguel Moniz is an anthropologist (PhD, Brown University) at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais (ICS), Universidade de Lisboa in Portugal and has been a distinguished visiting scholar at Brown University and at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Moniz work has been supported by fellowships and grants on projects funded through the Fulbright Foundation, the Portuguese National Science Foundation (FCT), the Fundação Luso-Americana, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the European Research Council (ERC), the Rhode Island Endowment for the Humanities, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, Rhode Island Foundation, Europe for Citizens Program, and Erasmus +. ​​
Moniz is a member of the Fulbright Commission of Portugal's Board of Directors and is Exec. Director of the Migrant Communities Project, a 501 (C)(3) non-profit educational organization for the humanities, science, and culture. He is also on the boards of the Instituto de Estudos da Macaranonésia and the Tagus Press' (University of Massachusetts) Portuguese in the Americas Series. He heads the Global Comparative Drug Policy Working Group at the Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) on Opioids and Overdose (NIH #P20GM125507) at Brown University Health​. ​​In addition to scholarly articles Moniz contributes to journalism and opinion. His research has featured on NPR's All Things Considered and The Morning Edition, The Atlantic Magazine, the Oregonian, France 24, Diário de Notícias, O Público, Boston Globe, and other international publications. Op-eds appear in the New York Times, Diário de Noticias, Boston Globe, and the Providence Journal. Moniz has also provided news commentary for Portuguese television RTP, TVI, SIC).
RESEARCH INTERESTS
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• Labor, migration and racialization
• Substance use disorders and political policy
• Translocal and transnational circulation and place making from cultural, political, and legal perspectives
• Associativism & migrant cultural, economic, political, and socio-religious organizations
• Atlantic cultural diplomacy, policy, geopolitics
​• Anthropology of music (community building, place making, migration, activism)
• Forced migration, displacement, deportation
• Critical approaches to the state, nationalism and nation building
• Constructions of race, ethnicity, and nationalism
Additional activities
• Migration and sports
• Applied anthropology for social and racial equity, social welfare, and humanitarian ends
• Early Modern Atlantic seafaring texts
• Bibliology of the Azores and the Atlantic
• Material culture, rituals, intangible cultural patrimony
• Visual anthropology
current funded projects
Research Fellow/Track Coordinator, “Export Portugal. Cultural Diplomacy and the Rebranding Strategies of the Estado Novo in the United States (1933-1974)” National Science Foundation, Portugal (FCT) (2022.08653.PTDC, Gori)
Instituto de Ciências Sociais (ICS) Universidade de Lisboa
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mPI (Co-PI), “Portuguese Police Experience with Drug Decriminalization”
Brown University Health, Providence, RI
(Rhode Island Foundation; RI Hospital, Divisions of Infectious Diseases and General Internal Medicine; National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute on Drug Abuse ( K01DA056654 and R21DA057171, del Pozo)
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Executive Director, Migrant Communities Project (501(c)(3) non profit) Cultural Programs & History, Humanities, and Healthcare Educational Initiatives
Personal
I was raised in a community on Cape Cod, Massachusetts founded and built by Azorean and Cape Verdean migrant farm workers and construction laborers. In the US I have lived in Providence, RI; Boston, Fall River, MA; New York, NY; across Connecticut and in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.
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I started living in Portugal on-and-off beginning in the mid-1990s (mostly in the Azores on my family's island of São Miguel and also Terceira). But after first visiting Lisbon in 1989, the city put the zap on me, and I returned frequently, moving here permanently in 2005. In Europe I have also
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lived in Germany as well as in Snowdonia, in north Wales.
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On the Cape, I worked laying concrete foundations in my family's masonry business, a job I held during and after college. An undergraduate anthropology honors thesis studying the Azorean crew I worked with and the Espírito Santo Festival they put on every summer in my town, led to a life time of learning and research about migrant communities and the histories and challenges in the places of my greatest affection in New England, Portugal, and other connected geographies.
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Upcoming/Recent talks & Events
Historical Exhibit
Fulbright Commission Portugal
"Fulbright Portugal 65 Years (1960-2025)"
March 20
Casa do Alentejo
Lisbon
Fulbright Commission Portugal and FCT Project Export: Estado Novo cultural diplomacy and rebranding strategies of the United States (1933-1974)
Conference Paper
Shaping Minds: Cultural Diplomacy of European Dictators in the United States
"The Diplomat Cardinal for Fascism: Salazar’s Estado Novo, Anti- communism, and the Lisbon Patriarch’s 1936 Tour of North American Immigrant Communities"
February 21, 10:00 (GMT)
Institute of Social Sciences
University of Lisbon
Invited lecture
Comparative Addiction Policy Georgetown University
Washington, DC
"Portugal's Drug Policy Experience in Comparative Perspective"
June 5, 11:00 am (EST)
Conference Paper and Panel
Association for Spanish & Portuguese Studies
Paper:
Portuguese National Churches in North America: Estado Novo Influence, Soft Diplomacy, and Immigrant organization through the Catholic Church
Panel:
State Authority, Soft Diplomacy, and Collective Organization among Immigrant Communities from Portugal in North America: the Estado Novo, the Portuguese Church, and Associativism
Universidade de Lisboa
8-12 July
Conference Paper
European Association of Social Anthropology
Doing and Undoing with Anthropology
Immigrant Museums, Heritage Sites, and the Local Politics of Memorialization: competing and complementary aims of activists, agents of cultural diplomacy, and who decides how the past is narrated.
Lisbon, Portugal
Universidade de Barcelona
23-26 July
Radio show w/ music and discussion
The Revolution Starts with Music, with Maria Dybcio
Cashmere Radio
Berlin
"The Soundtrack to the Carnation Revolution"
Maria Dybcio interviews Miguel Moniz about protest music and Portugal's 25, April 1974 Carnation Revolution
Air date: April 24, 18:00 (CET)
90 minutes
