Interview with Roberto Vecchi: colonial nostalgia in the country of saudade – longings for the past in Portugal

Roberto Vecchi is Professor at the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures of the University of Bologna, where he holds the chair in Portuguese and Brazilian Literature, and where, together with Margarida Calafate Ribeiro, he is responsible for the Eduardo Lourenço Chair (University of Bologna/Instituto Camões). Further, he also occupies the position of Vice Rector for Teaching at the University of Bologna. He is a fellow researcher at CES (Centro de Estudos Sociais), University of Coimbra, studying trauma, colonial war and violence. Additionally, in Brazil, he is a CNPq researcher in the research group on violence and literature. He has published widely on the literature of the Portuguese colonial war, such as Portugal, Excepção atlântica. Pensar a literatura da guerra colonial (Porto, 2010). Together with Margarida Calafate Ribeiro and Monica V. Silva, he has organized Papéis da prisão de José Luandino Vieira (2015) and has co-published an Anthology of essays by Eduardo Lourenço, Do colonialismo como nosso impensado (Lisboa, 2014), which has been relaunched recently (2024). In a forthcoming book, he analyzes nostalgic imaginations of Africa in Portuguese cultural texts.