Dr Rui Lopes

Overview

Biography

I am a historian who specialises in contemporary history, particularly on Cold War visual culture, transnational anticolonialism, and the international dimension of the Portuguese dictatorship and empire.

I have a PhD in International History from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and I am a researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History, NOVA-FCSH, in Lisbon. Before joining Birkbeck, I taught at the LSE and at Goldsmiths, University of London. I was managing editor for the journal Cold War History and I am currently an active member of the editorial boards of the journals Práticas da História: Journal on Theory, Historiography and Uses of the Past and Aniki: Portuguese Journal of the Moving Image. I have also been a screenwriter for television.

Highlights

• 'Visualising the Cold War: Transnational production and circulation of visual spy fiction, 1960s-80s' (2022-2028) - individual project focusing on the articulation between spy films, TV series, and comic books and the evolving images of the Cold War.
  

• 'Censorship(s):an analytic model of censorial processes' (2022-2023) - co-PI of team project developing new approaches to the study of modern logics and methods of censorship.

• 'Lusophone Africa and the Global Cold War: New International and Regional Perspectives' (2022) - co-host of online seminar series  discussing the interplay between ideologies of liberation in the former Portuguese colonies and the Cold War in the 1960s and early 1970s.

• 'Amílcar Cabral, from political history to the politics of memory' (2016-2019) - Principal Investigator of team project researching the circulation and legacy of the ideas of Amílcar Cabral, head of the anticolonial struggle of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde.
  

• 'The Portuguese dictatorship and colonialism in western audiovisual fiction, 1933-1974' (2016-2021) - individual research project focused on the depictions of Portugal's 'Estado Novo' regime and its colonies by cinema and television produced in France, Italy, UK, USA, and West Germany.
  

ORCID

0000-0002-8894-9733

Research

Research interests

• Cold War & Popular Culture (esp. cinema, television, comics)
• Relations between European liberal and iliberal regimes after World War II
• African anticolonialism in 1960s-1970s
• Foreign relations of Portugal's 'Estado Novo' dictatorship

Research overview

Monographs

West Germany and the Portuguese Dictatorship, 1968-1974: Between Cold War and Colonialism, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

 

Peer-reviewed chapters

'From Caligari to Wertham: When EC’s Horror Comics Feared for Their Own Survival', in John Darowski and Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns (eds), Critical Approaches to Horror Comic Books: Red Ink in the Gutter, Routledge, 2022.

‘Iconic City Thrillers: Encoding Geopolitics Through Cinema’, in Erica van Boven and Marieke Winkler (eds), The Construction and Dynamics of Cultural Icons, Amsterdam University Press, 2021, 111-128.

‘The US and Portuguese Colonialism as Imagined through Television Drama’, in Maria do Carmo Piçarra and Teresa Castro (eds), (Re)imagining African Independence: Film, Visual Arts and the Fall of the Portuguese Empire, Peter Lang, 2017, pp.131-149.

 

Peer-reviewed articles

'The Eurospy boom and the evolution of Europe’s transnational identity', Intelligence and National Security (2022).

‘Retconning the History of Covert Operations: Spy Comics at the End of the Cold War’, Cold War History, 22:2 (2022), 215-236.

‘Jogo e conspiração em Hollywood: o Portugal que não foi’, Aniki: Portuguese Journal of the Moving Image, 6:1 (2019), 3-31.

‘‘must we all remain helpless?’: Superman vs. the Nuclear Threat in the Late Cold War’, ImageText, 10:2 (2019).

‘Fado and Fatima: Salazar’s Portugal in US Film Fiction’, Film History, 29:3 (2017), 52-75.

'An Oasis in Europe: Hollywood Depictions of Portugal during the Second World War', Journal of Contemporary History, 52:2 (2017), 375-398.

‘’A fabulous speck on the Earth’s surface’: Depictions of colonial Macao in 1950s’ Hollywood’, Portuguese Studies, 32:1 (2016), 72-87.

'Accommodating and Confronting the Portuguese Dictatorship within NATO, 1970–4', The International History Review, 38:3 (2016), 505-526.

 

Special Dossier

co-organised with Víctor Barros, ‘Amílcar Cabral and the Liberation of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: International, Transnational, and Global Dimensions’, The International History Review, 42:6 (2020).

Research Centres and Institutes

• researcher, Instituto de História Contemporânea, NOVA-FCSH