13 March 2024 a guest lecture by prof. Renata Díaz-Szmidt was held at the Faculty of International and Political Studies. The lecture, entitled Własnym głosem – literatura kobiet w krajach afrykańskich języka portugalskiego [In her own voice – women’s literature in Portuguese-speaking African countries] was organized by the Jagiellonian Research Center for African Studies. It focused on the development of women’s writing, mainly in Mozambique, but also in other countries, such as Angola or Cape Verde. The event attracted great interest, as evidenced by the lecture hall being filled to capacity and the questions asked by the participants. Thank you for a great lecture and we hope to meet again.

PROF. RENATA DÍAZ-SZMIDT

Assistant professor at the Institute of Iberian and Ibero-American Studies of the University of Warsaw, where she heads the Department of Interdisciplinary Research on Portuguese-Speaking Countries. She also taught at the Jagiellonian University, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, and the University of Granada. In her research she focuses on the literature and culture of Portuguese-speaking African countries (especially Mozambique and Angola) and the literature and culture of the only Spanish-speaking country in Africa - Equatorial Guinea. She is interested in research conducted from the perspective of postcolonial studies. She was on scholarship at the University of Lisbon and the University of Santiago de Compostela. She also conducted research in Mozambique and Cameroon. Member of the Polish Africanist Society (PTAfr). Author of the following books (in Polish): Muthiana orera, onroa vayi? Where are you going, beautiful woman? – transformations of female identity in the novels of the Mozambican writer Paulina Chiziane (2010) and Where Are You, Guinea? Attempts to shape national identity in the works of writers from Equatorial Guinea (2017). She is the author of numerous scientific articles in Polish, English, Portuguese, Spanish and French. She also co-edited books on contemporary African literatures (in Polish): African Kaleidoscope: Problems of identity in African literatures at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries (2012), Contemporary African literatures and other cultural texts in the light of post-colonial research (2015) and African intellectuals and the experience of dictatorships (2018).