Laboratório de Ciências Sociais e Humanidades

Universidade Católica de Angola

INTRODUCTION The Social Sciences and Humanities Laboratory (LAB) is a research Centre of the Angolan Catholic University created in March 2017, endowed with scientific, cultural and administrative autonomy. It is dedicated to the development and promotion of research in the fields of social sciences and humanities in an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives.

The LAB is organized around a constellation of research projects bringing together faculty and students from across the humanities and other disciplines, as well as civil society and local communities. It is designed to foster formal collaboration as well as informal exchange. Shared technological resources will enable to experiment with new research methods, new lines of inquiry, and new ways of engaging with the public.

The LAB aims to reflect upon the contemporary challenges of the fields of social sciences and humanities. Those challenges have a global character and include the demand for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches in order to reinforce inter-cultural dialogues in the context of globalization. Given the central focus on inter-cultural dialogues, its general goal can be summarized as follows: to promote and enhance an inclusive and participated process of knowledge construction aimed at a comprehensive and multidimensional understanding of contemporary social life in different places of enunciation and experience. In this sense, one main concern is the promotion of the development and visibility of knowledge production in the social sciences and humanities realms in Africa. Thus, a particular attention to imperatives and practices of internationalization, partnership and networking is at the core of LAB’s agenda. On the other hand, the contribution to institutional building and empowerment and to the creation of research dynamics that can, in its turn, enrich Angolan higher education system are fundamental objectives. LAB’s main goals and guidelines: a. To promote the development of knowledge production in social sciences and humanities in dialogue with the epistemological diversity.
b. To contribute to an inclusive and just social development through fundamental and applied research. c. To promote interdisciplinary and transdiciplinary research through the investment in national human resources and the development of national and international networking settings for collaborative research;
d. To reinforce scientific collaboration within the academic community and to enhance the relationship between teaching and research; e. To develop instruments and theoretical, analytical and methodological approaches able to produce a multidimensional understanding of contemporary social life, especially in postcolonial contexts; f. To disseminate scientific knowledge, making it available to the general public. g. To contribute to curricula innovation and good practices in terms of learning, teaching and research. h. To provide a technological and creative structure available for research projects and academic community to work on their materials and on collaborative manner, while promoting creativity in producing outcomes able to reinforce the relationship between the academic community and local communities. i. To engage undergraduates in advanced research alongside faculty and graduate student mentors and collaborators.

LINES OF RESEARCH - Epistemological diversity and knowledge production in contemporary world: representation, knowledge, power. Synopsis:
The starting point of this research topic can be subsumed under the headings of a critical analysis of the history(ies) of ideas as well as of an acute consciousness concerning the historical and cultural contexts of knowledge production. It wishes to interrogate the multiple dilemmas that post-modern, post-structuralist and post-colonial readings introduced in what concerns a comprehensive understanding and mutual recognition of historical subjects in distinct places of enunciation. A critical re-visitation of traditions and conceptual universes imposes itself. What is identity? What should one understand as inter-cultural? Is it possible to think in terms of transcendence? What are its implications in terms of cognitive, ontological and historical justice? This critical undertaking aims to explore the possibilities of understanding epistemological diversity in terms of communality whereby new positionings and relationships between subjects and communities can be established. This research topic includes several thematic concerns: the geopolitical dynamic in knowledge construction and coloniality, epistemological diversity, identity discourses, postcolonial positionings, literary studies, philosophy in a hermeneutical and historical approach, and so forth.

- Globalization and contemporary societal challenges. Synopsis:
A critical focus on globalization processes, dimensions and impacts is a necessary point of anchorage in critical analysis and thinking. It requires a trans-scale form of analysis able to put forward the multiple and complex linkages between local, national, regional and global levels, discourses, agendas, movements and institutions. This research topic include the analysis of emergent forms of inequalities, environmental challenges, supranational and infra-national forms of political action and regulation, social movements and their transnational and extra-institutional dynamics, contemporary cultural productions, etc. - Africa in the world. Synopsis: This research topic includes two dimensions. On one hand, the challenge to map and critically deconstruct hegemonic representations about Africa. On the other hand, to construct critically a comprehensive account about the contemporary reality of the Continent in terms of its insertion in the world-system and in terms of its own readings concerning the global and of its critical inputs. A number of topics can be explored, such as State Building in a diachronic perspective, a revision of theoretical explanations regarding the African nation-state, the reinvention and actualization of sociabilites, social impacts of development policies, artistic and cultural productions, citizenship and public spheres, dynamics of conflict, experiences of reconciliation and peace building, and so forth.
- Sustainability and ethics. Synopsis: Life’s sustainability represents today a major concern. In a significant way, it has risen from the awareness concerning the globalization’s multiple challenges. It is linked to a profound critique of development models that cannot distance themselves from an extractivist logic and a classic anthropocentric vision. The sustainability debate is being accompanied by the formulation of ethics positionings that focus on idea of care toward oneself, the other, the community and the planet. This line of research occupies itself with ecological awareness, natural resources, pollution and violence, poverty, exclusion and social marginalization, amongst other topics. - Societal reinventions and development Synopsis:
Giving privilege to synchronic and diachronic perspective, this research topic aims to explore how main societal dimensions are currently being reconfigured and reconstructed in the context of profound, paradigmatic and conflictual transitions. It is concerned, therefore, with themes such as social bound, citizenship, politics of identity, alterity and recognition, public/private, participation, inclusion, social functions of the state, the role of civil society and so forth. Issues like education, health, justice and rights are at the core of this topic.