About me, briefly... Born February 1953 in Beira, Mozambique. Studies: Beira (Liceu Pêro de Anaia), Portugal (Colégio Manuel Bernardes and Colégio Nuno Álvares), Law School (1 year, University of Lisbon), BA History at Eduardo Mondlane University (Mozambique) and research work carried out at Witwatersrand [1], Uppsala and Oxford universities. Doctorate from the University of Oxford (D.Phil 1987, African Archaeology). Resident in Sweden since 1995.
Professional activities:
Deputy Director, Social Sciences at the IGBP Secretariat (International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme) based at The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1995 - Sep 2012): formal representation at national and international scientific meetings, overseeing the setting-up of the International Human Dimension Programme (IHDP) in Bonn, and liaison with 78 IGBP national committees and regional global change initiatives (European Alliance of Global Change National Committees, IAI-Inter American Institute, APN-the Asian-Pacific Network for Global Environmental Change Research, AfricanNESS-the African Network for Earth System Science) . Scientific liaison with IGBP core projects on global palaeoscience (PAGES, Past Global Changes) human-terrestrial ecosystems (Global Land Project), coastal management (Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone Project) and coupled human-environmental systems (the 'Integrated History and Future of People on Earth' initiative). The liaison work included the peer reviewing of endorsed projects, publications, fund raising and lobbying for institutional support.
Principal Researcher at IICT, the Tropical Research Institute (African archaeology, 1987-1995) and Professor at ULHT, the University Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias (1993-1995, African Studies), both in Lisbon: administrative and scientific co-ordination, planning of new research initiatives, conferences and university teaching on methodology of the social sciences and African Prehistory both at university and polytechnic levels (Santarém and Azores).
Research Fellow, Department of Cultural Anthropology, Uppsala University (March 1985 - May 1987): African Research programme (with Professors Anita Jakobsson-Widding and Paul Sinclair) in preparation of a DPhil dissertation completed at Oxford in May 1987 following initial work while in residence (1979-1980). The supervisor of the doctoral thesis was Dr Ray Inskeep and the oral examiners Drs David Phillipson and Andrew Sherrat. The 'viva voce' (as the oral examination is know in Oxford) took place the Ashmolean Museum where Andrew Sherrat was Assistant Keeper of Antiquities.
Founding Head of Department of Archaeology and Anthropology (DAA) at Eduardo Mondlane University, Maputo, Mozambique (May 1976 - Mar 1984) : the Department evolved from an Archaeological Unit (1973-1975) to a fully-fledged, well-funded institution, setting-up a groundbreaking national survey programme aiming to contribute with new knowledge for schooling and broader public awareness. The research work included joint teams from DAA, the Swedish National Heritage Board and Uppsala University.
Last brief assignment, before retirement: Senior Research Adviser, Research Cooperation Unit at Sida, the Swedish International Development Agency (Sept 2012 - Feb 2017) for scientific support concerning: (i) research cooperation for development (ii) Swedish research of relevance to developing countries and (iii) selected international science initiatives.
Personal reminiscences
Mozambique offers a kaleidoscope of unique ingredients: African, Asian, and European, brought together in a magical world midway land and sea, of tidal waves perpetually remaking channels, paths, and shores: Fragments of cultural and natural creation, where multiple languages, colour and creed blend with the seasonal moods of the Zambezian deltas and the mighty Indian Ocean, where mixed communities coexist since immemorial times in vast man-made savannas. Life before the Flood...
To live alongside a playground of urban mangrove forest (as we had in Beira those days) is to have access to everlasting adventure: curiosity often led me there, a wonderland made up of mudskippers, birdlife and scattered pottery shards lying next to abandoned huts. Such an ever-changing universe of washed away tides define what was to come next: a life divided between Beira, Maputo, Lisbon, Oxford, Uppsala, Stockholm… and a career I decided to pursue (archaeology) despite other family plans (law).
The country’s independence in 1975 under a totalitarian regime led to increasing social exclusion, persecution, and the nationalisation of all family property, resulting in their forced departure. As a third generation of ‘white Mozambicans’, I decided to stay on, inspired by the sense of a new world of social atonement.
Holding on to the dream of building a new nation ignorant of its past I enthusiastically embraced archaeological research after graduation in History. Considering the absence of scientific infrastructure and expertise, I welcomed the opportunity of becoming the founding head in 1976 a new Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at Eduardo Mondlane University promoting a national ‘Archaeological Survey Programme’ which became funded through Swedish scientific collaboration.
A relatively short interlude: no matter excellent progress in just a decade, I left the country in 1984 partly for family reasons but also gradually disenchanted by a despotic regime motivating a cruel civil war, ruining expectations, and making archaeological fieldwork unfeasible. The first and last of kin, my eighty-year-old grandfather and me: the older and younger generations sharing the same flight out into the unknown. As a father at twenty-three, and a wife that had left the country the previous year, divorce expected me in Lisbon. Unable to cope with rejection, with two children entrusted to the custody of their mother, I went abroad soon thereafter: an impulsive desire to start over somewhere. Days of uncertainty, hard work, and solitude.
Along the flow of unexpected events, a short-term Portuguese scholarship and previous work led me to Sweden, where I spent two years (1985-1987) as guest researcher at the Department of Cultural Anthropology, Uppsala University. This opportunity allowed me to finalise the writing-up of my thesis and to return to Oxford in order to complete a doctoral degree in African Archaeology I had started while resident in 1979-1980. Unable to see a future in war-ridden Mozambique which I visited in 1987, I settled in Lisbon between 1987 and 1995 working as principal researcher (Tropical Research Institute) and professor (Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias).
Increasingly attracted by scientific questions of a more holistic, interdisciplinary, nature, I went back to Sweden in 1995 following an appointment as deputy director (Social Sciences) at the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme Secretariat (IGBP) based at The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: the most fulfilling and creative seventeen years of my professional life, engaging with the scientific excellence of a worldwide network of global environmental change scholars and research organisations which lead, among other accomplishments, to the concept of the 'Anthropocene' and 'Planetary Boundaries' (see my blog https://joaodemorais.com/a-brief-chronicle-of-the-anthropocene).
Realising that the secretariat was approaching closure and having accomplished my goal, I spent the last few years before retirement as Senior Research Adviser at the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (2012-2016), somehow under the illusion that it preserved the quality of the staff we had met as when we had started (the sponsor of our original archaeological work). I was wrong: sickly, unproductive bureaucracy and lack of scientific rigour led me to resign.
What have I learned? I believe that the dawn of a healthier governance, science, and public understanding may ultimately forge a new collective vision, moral responsibility, and wisdom. We dearly need to make headway to discredit misconceptions upholding that the world is random, purely material and chaotic. If we are to survive as a species, we must respect and live in a creative relationship with our communities, the nature we’re part of and behold a sense of meaning and spiritual connection beyond the material realm.
On a final, personal note: I am married to Anki and father to Sofia, Miguel, Daniel, and Klara. My pastimes include writing, reading, photography and motorcycle travel.
[1] In Johannesburg Ricardo and I shared Carlos Cardoso's own (tiny!) apartment that he generously made available. Carlos was at the time studying Philosophy at Wits and became years later an outstanding Mozambican journalist and an advocate against corruption in support of 'the open society', which led to be politically assassinated in 2000.
[Photo: The Baltic Sea at Stockholm, viewed from the ‘Moderna Museet]