Professor Lisa Shaw Ph.D

Professor of Brazilian Studies Languages, Cultures and Film

About

Personal Statement

I am Professor of Brazilian Studies at the University of Liverpool, where I have worked since 2005 after completing 15 years at the University of Leeds as lecturer/senior lecturer in Portuguese. In 1999 I was visiting lecturer in Brazilian Culture and Civilization at the University of California, Los Angeles. My research interests are Brazilian cultural history, with an emphasis on 20th-century popular theatre, music and film, and in particular from a transnational perspective. In 2011 I was awarded a Senior Research Fellowship by the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust, which enabled me to carry out archival research in Brazil for the monograph Tropical Travels: Brazilian Popular Performance, Transnational Encounters, and the Construction of Race (University of Texas Press, 2018). I lead the Impact project "Cinema, Memory and Wellbeing", which explores the use of music and film as a reminiscence tool to improve the emotional wellbeing of the older population, and involves outreach initiatives on Merseyside and in the states of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil. I am currently working with colleagues at the University of Liverpool and care homes across the northwest of England, as well as partners in Brazil, to expand this project to embrace those living with dementia.
I would be interested in supervising PhD projects relating to any of the following areas: Latin American cinema, Latin American popular music, the performance of race and ethnicity in Latin American culture, stardom in world cinemas, music, film and memory, and Portuguese-English translation (written and audio-visual, and interpreting). I am currently supervising doctoral research projects on fan-subbing (subtitling) of Chinese audio-visual material and the Afro-Brazilian soprano Elsie Houston in a transnational context.

Prizes or Honours

  • Adjunct research fellow (Monash University, Melbourne, 2010)

Funded Fellowships

  • Senior Research Fellowship (Leverhulme Trust in collaboration with the British Academy, 2011)
  • Visiting professor in Brazilian Culture and Civilization (University of California, Los Angeles, 1999)