Inocência Luciano dos Santos Mata is a

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

-based essayist and academic from

São Tomé and Príncipe São Tomé and Príncipe, officially the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe, is an island country in the Gulf of Guinea, off the western equatorial coast of Central Africa. It consists of two archipelagos around the two main isla ...

. Her work as a professor and researcher at the

University of Lisbon The University of Lisbon (ULisboa; ) is a public university, public research university in Lisbon, and Portugal's largest university. It was founded in 1911, but the university's present structure dates to the 2013 merger of the former Universit ...

's School of Letters is focused on Portuguese-language literature and post-colonial studies. She is a founding member of the National Union of Writers and Artists of São Tomé and Príncipe, as well as a corresponding member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, Class of Letters.

Biography

Inocência Mata was born in what is now São Tomé and Príncipe, on the island of

Príncipe Príncipe (; ) is the smaller, northern major island of the country of São Tomé and Príncipe lying off the west coast of Africa in the Gulf of Guinea. It has an area of (including offshore islets) and a population of 7,324 at the 2012 Cens ...

. Her family was from both

Angola Angola, officially the Republic of Angola, is a country on the west-Central Africa, central coast of Southern Africa. It is the second-largest Portuguese-speaking world, Portuguese-speaking (Lusophone) country in both total area and List of c ...

and São Tomé and Príncipe, with some

Romani Romani may refer to: Ethnic groups * Romani people, or Roma, an ethnic group of Indo-Aryan origin ** Romani language, an Indo-Aryan macrolanguage of the Romani communities ** Romanichal, Romani subgroup in the United Kingdom * Romanians (Romanian ...

and Northeast Brazilian roots. She attended grade school in Príncipe and in Angola. After moving to Portugal in 1980, she obtained a Ph.D. in letters from the

and a post-doctoral degree in post-colonial studies, identity, ethnicity, and globalization from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. Her focus on this discipline has continued in her work as a researcher and professor at the University of Lisbon's School of Letters, in the area of Literatures, Arts, and Cultures. She is also involved in the university's Center for Comparative Studies. Mata has served as a guest professor at several other universities, including the University of Macau, where she was deputy director of the Portuguese Department until 2017. Among various other professional associations, Mata is a founding member of the National Union of Writers and Artists of São Tomé and Príncipe. She is the author of nearly a dozen books on Portuguese-language literature and post-colonial studies, beginning with ''Literatura Angolana: Silêncios e Falas de uma Voz Inquieta'' in 2001. Mata, who remains a citizen of São Tomé and Príncipe, is a corresponding member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, Class of Letters. In 2015, she was the recipient of the Portuguese Femina Prize for her work teaching Portuguese-language literature. In 2020, Mata joined several dozen other African intellectuals in writing an open letter calling on African leaders to pursue structural change in response to the

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Selected works

* ''Literatura Angolana: Silêncios e Falas de uma Voz Inquieta'' (2001) * ''A Suave Pátria: Reflexões político-culturais sobre a sociedade são-tomense'' (2004) * ''Laços de Memória & Outros Ensaios sobre Literatura Angolana'' (2006) * ''A Literatura Africana e a Crítica Pós-colonial: Reconversões'' (2007, republished 2013) * ''Polifonias Insulares: Cultura e Literatura de São Tomé e Príncipe'' (2010) * ''Ficção e História na Literatura Angola: O Caso de Pepetela'' (2010, republished 2011) * ''Francisco José Tenreiro: As Múltiplas Faces de um Intelectual'' (2011) * ''A Rainha Nzinga Mbandi: História, Memória e Mito'' (2012) * ''Colonial/Post-Colonial: Writing as Memory in Literature'' (2012, with Fernanda Gil Costa) * ''A Casa dos Estudantes do Império e o lugar da literatura na consciencialização política'' (2015)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mata, Inocencia São Tomé and Príncipe women writers Postcolonial theorists Portuguese women academics Portuguese essayists Portuguese women essayists University of Lisbon alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni People from Príncipe 1957 births Living people Members of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences Academic staff of the University of Lisbon