Moisés de Lemos Martins (born March 8, 1953) is a full professor at the Department of Communication Sciences, University of Minho. He is the Director of CECS – the Communication and Society Research Centre, which he founded in 2001, and of the Virtual Museum of Lusophony, which he set up in 2017. He is also the director of the scientific journals Comunicação e Sociedade (Communication and Society), Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais/Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies, and the Vista. He launched the former in 1999, the second in 2013, and the latter in 2020. He is a sociologist and communication theorist, as well as an essayist and regular contributor to the media.
Biography
Moisés de Lemos Martins was born in Vila Cova da Lixa, Felgueiras, on March 8, 1953. He is a sociologist, Communication theorist, essayist and a regular contributor to the media. He is a Full Professor at the University of Minho, and director of the CECS – Communication and Society Research Centre. His strategic project is focused on this research unit, which currently comprises six intervention platforms, which he founded or helped found: the Virtual Museum of Lusophony, an academic cooperation platform in the fields of science, teaching and arts, in Portuguese-speaking countries; the Observatory for Science, Communication and Cultural Policies (POLObs); Passeio, an art and urban culture platform; the Media and Information Literacy Observatory (MILObs); the Communitas Think Tank, a platform that monitors the agenda and debate in public, local, regional and national spaces; and CreateLab, a creative agency, oriented towards innovation and experimentation, that produces audio-visual and multimedia content, at the service of strategic communication. He is the director of the Virtual Museum of Lusophony, as well as the scientific journals, Comunicação e Sociedade (Communication and Society), Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais/Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies, and the Vista. He is the founder and editor of the CECS book collection, "Comunicação e Sociedade", as well as the open science community of this research unit in the RepositóriUM of the University of Minho. This activity has helped confirm the thesis that the University of Minho is "champion in the digital disclosure of its works", as suggested by the physicist and university professor, Carlos Fiolhais, in reference to the work of Moisés de Lemos Martins. He is the Honorary President of Sopcom – the Portuguese Association of Communication sciences. In 2015, Intercom – Brazilian Society for Interdisciplinary Communication Studies awarded him the academic distinction. In 2016, the University of Minho distinguished him with the Scientific Merit Award.
He studied Theology and Philosophy at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP), in Lisbon, and has a BA Hons. degree in Catholic Theology from the University of Human Sciences in Strasbourg. At this university, he also studied Social Sciences, majoring in Sociology, and completed his master's degree in 1980 and his PhD in 1984. He was awarded a scholarship by the French Government's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1978/1984). He taught sociology at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, in Lisbon, and also at the University of Beira Interior (UBI), before moving to the University of Minho, in 1990, where he has been Full Professor since 1998.
His academic training was marked by Fr. Bento Domingues, Edgar Morin, Francis Jacques, Friedrich Kittler, Georg Simmel, Gilbert Durand, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Jean-François Lyotard, Jürgen Habermas, Karl-Otto Apel, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Michel de Certeau, Michel Foucault, Michel Maffesoli, Pierre Bourdieu, Roland Barthes and Walter Benjamin, which is why he is predominantly identified with the comprehensive method of the Human and social Sciences, that is founded on discourse and thought, and, on a secondary basis, with the explanatory method, that is founded on number and measure, to paraphrase a classic categorisation by the German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey. His areas of teaching and research are Sociology of Culture and Communication, Social Semiotics, Theory and Discourse Analysis, Visual Studies, Media Arts, Scientific Policy, Cultural Studies, Intercultural Communication, Lusophone Studies and Salazarism.
He has served as visiting professor at the following universities: Autonomous University of Barcelona; Autonomous University of Madrid; Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais (Belo Horizonte); Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo; Pontifical University of Salamanca; Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (at Porto Alegre); University of Cape Verde; University of Santiago de Compostela; Université catholique de Louvain; Federal University of Bahia; Federal University of Minas Gerais (Belo Horizonte); Université Paris-Descartes (Sorbonne); Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier; Universidade Politécnica (of Mozambique)in Maputo; Mackenzie Presbyterian University (São Paulo); Universidade Zambeze (Beira, Mozambique).
In 2002, when interviewed by academic, Virgínia Moreira and editor and academic, José Manuel Paquete de Oliveira, they pointed out that it was "just and correct" to include Moisés de Lemos Martins among the most distinguished "Portuguese researchers" "in the exchange process", not only Luso-Brazilian, but more extensively throughout Portuguese-speaking countries.
In 2016, the Portal Mutirão, of the Methodist University of São Paulo, identified Moisés de Lemos Martins' academic profile, highlighting his pedagogical, scientific and associative work. The Portal Mutirão was created in 2016 by José Marques de Melo, journalist, university professor and pioneer of Communication Science studies in Brazil, to distinguish not only the uniqueness of the research work pursued in Brazil in this scientific field, but also of academics from all over the world who have helped develop and consolidate the academic community of Communication Sciences in Brazil.
In 2013, with the Brazilian academics Antônio Hohlfeldt and Cicilia Peruzzo, from Intercom (the Brazilian Society for Interdisciplinary Communication Studies), Moisés de Lemos Martins helped Tomás José Jane, Professor at the Higher School of Journalism, in Maputo, Mozambique, to found Acicom – the Mozambican Association of Information and Communication Sciences. Later that year, with Margarita Ledo, Professor at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Moisés de Lemos Martins helped Silvino Lopes Évora, Professor at the university of Cape Verde, in Praia, Cape Verde, to found Mediacom – the Cape Verdean Association of Communication Sciences. Moisés de Lemos Martins is an honorary member of Mediacom.
Management functions Moisés de Lemos Martins directed the Department of Social sciences at the University of Beira Interior between 1988/1990, and in 1989 created the BA Hons. degree in Social Communication and in 1990, the magazine Anais Universitarios, of which he was the first editor. He was director of the BA Hons. degree course in Sociology at this university. Between 1988 and 1990, he taught History of Sociology. In conjunction with Aníbal Alves, emeritus professor at the University of Minho, he helped set up the BA Hons. degree in Media Studies (Comunicação Social) at this university. In 1991, he began teaching semiotics, Theory and Analysis of Discourse and Sociology of Communication. At the University of Minho, from 1990 to 1993, he directed the BA Hons. course in Sociology of Organizations, founded by Manuel da Silva Costa in 1989, in which he taught the discipline, Sociology of Power. With Albertino Gonçalves, Professor of Sociology at the University of Minho, he created the master's degree in Sociology of Culture and Lifestyles (1996–2011), in which he taught Sociology of Culture, and the master's degree in communication, Art and Culture, in 2011, in which he taught Sociology of Communication. For ten years, he was the director of the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Minho (1996/2000 and 2004/2010). In 2006, he was one of the candidates to be elected Rector of this university.
He was the first Director of the PhD course in Communication Sciences at the University of Minho (2009/2011), in which he taught, Social Semiotics. He promoted the teaching and research project in Cultural Studies, at the University of Minho's Institute of Social Sciences, and was the director of the PhD programme in Cultural Studies (2010/2015), a joint initiative of the University of Minho and the University of Aveiro. He teaches Sociology of Culture in the PhD programme in Cultural Studies. He was the promoter and director of the PhD programme in "Communication Studies: Technology, Culture and Society" (2013/2015), funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), which involved six Portuguese research centres in five universities. He taught the discipline, Intercultural Communication, in this PhD. In 2018, he helped found a PhD course in Language, Culture and Society, at the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences, of Zambezi University, in the city of Beira, Mozambique, where he taught Intercultural Communication.
He was the co-founder of Sopcom – Portuguese Association of Communication Sciences, and its President (2005/2015). He was also the president of Lusocom – the Lusophone Federation of Communication Sciences (2011/2015). He was editor of the Anuário Internacional de Comunicação Lusófona (International Yearbook of Lusophone Communication), a scientific journal published by Lusocom (2007/2011). He also presided over Confibercom – the Ibero-American Confederation of Scientific and Academic Communication Associations (2012/2015). Since 2019, he has been the Secretary General of Assibercom – the Ibero-American Association of Communication Researchers.
A comprehensive and transcultural social theory Right after the publication of A Linguagem, a Verdade e o Poder – Ensaio de Semiótica Social (Language, Truth and Power – an Essay on Social Semiotics), in 2002, Moisés de Lemos Martins was described by Eduardo Prado Coelho, university professor, essayist and literary critic, as "a cornerstone of communication studies in Portugal". He said that this is because his work makes it possible "not only to retrace an entire fundamental theoretical path, but also places us at the centre of the major issues of analysis of contemporary reality (in this point – where linguistics, rhetoric, critical theory, sociology, anthropology and psychoanalysis become intertwined and blurred, and sometimes even redistribute themselves)". Luís Carmelo, a writer and university professor, after reading A Linguagem, a Verdade e o Poder, in 2003, wrote: "The role of Moisés de Lemos Martins has been rich, stimulating and productive, as a healthy polemicist within the scientific and academic community. It is this desire to dispute ideas and encourage lifelong learning that perhaps best defines what the author tries to describe, at the end of his essay, as 'the passion of the university'".
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