SALOMÉ LOPES COELHO
Short Bio
I am a researcher in film and art studies working at the intersection of cinema, aesthetics, and the environmental humanities. I am a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University, contributing to the project Ecologies of Violence: Crimes against Nature in the Contemporary Cultural Imagination.
I was a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Communication Sciences at NOVA University Lisbon, where I taught Political and Cultural Ecology (2025) and was a postdoctoral fellow at the NOVA Institute of Communication (2022–2025), leading the project Rhuthmanalysis and Ecologies of the Moving Image. This project investigated the rhythms of vegetal and inorganic matter in contemporary Latin American experimental cinema by women filmmakers and artists through environmental aesthetics and feminist posthumanist philosophies. I am also a research member of the Eco- and Bioart Lab at Linköping University, Sweden.
Beyond academia, I have contributed to film curation, cultural programming, and interdisciplinary events with artists, filmmakers, and cultural institutions in Portugal, Argentina, and France. These collaborations include public talk series, screenings, festivals, and performances. I occasionally engage in filmmaking experiments that open dialogue with my research.
I hold a PhD in Artistic Studies–Art and Mediations from NOVA University Lisbon (2021), where I completed the dissertation Vital Rhythm and the Gesture of Crossing: Survivals of Ekstasis in Cinema (FCT Fellowship). I also have an MA in Philosophy-Aesthetics, jointly completed at NOVA and Sorbonne University. I was a visiting researcher at the National University of Arts in Buenos Aires (2016) and later lectured there on cinema, philosophy, and rhythm in the art (2018–2021). I serve on the editorial board of La Furia Umana–Journal of History and Theory of Cinema.
More about my background
Born in Oporto, Portugal, in 1983, I first studied organisational psychology and worked as a trainer and human resources consultant for five years. In 2009, I moved to Lisbon to coordinate a four-year project on gender equality in schools, as well as the cultural programme of the Centre for Cultural and Feminist Intervention. I pursued feminist studies in Coimbra until 2011, when I began a master's in philosophy, specialising in the relationship between cinema and politics. In 2012, as part of my MA research, titled Agnès Varda and Jacques Rancière in the Gap Between Cinema and Politics, I completed a research stay at Sorbonne University. During this time, I also attended film studies classes at the University Paris VII and began making videos, inspired by Rancière's concept of the 'emancipated spectator' and its questioning of the artist-spectator duality. In 2013, I was awarded an FCT scholarship to pursue a PhD in Artistic Studies at NOVA University Lisbon, researching the role of rhythm and its analysis in the arts in relation to social organisation. I defended my PhD thesis in January 2021. As part of this research, I conducted fieldwork in the Andean region of Argentina and Bolivia and participated in research projects at the National University of Arts in Buenos Aires while contributing to film festivals and cultural institutions.