2017 Bios

Meet our team for 2017


Doreen Lorenzo
A successful leader of global creative firms, Lorenzo has advised Fortune 100 companies on design and innovation issues for decades. She is the former president of the global design firms frog and Quirky, co-founder of the mobile video insights firm Vidlet, a board member and adviser to several startup companies, and a columnist for Fast Company Co.Design and Medium. A thought leader on business and design issues, she speaks publicly about her signature leadership style and the power of empathy to drive business results.As Director of the Center for Integrated Design, Lorenzo leads an advisory group tasked with integrating design studies curricula in the College of Fine Arts, the McCombs School of Business, the School of Information, the Cockrell School of Engineering, the School of Architecture and the Department of Computer Science in the College of Natural Sciences. New curricular options will offer students opportunities to study design from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Lorenzo also works to create corporate and industry partnerships that connect students and faculty members to local, national, and international firms seeking design-savvy graduates.


Maria Fernanda Rollo, Secretária de Estado da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior
Nasceu em 1965 na República do Congo. É Doutorada e Agregada em História Contemporânea pela Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas (FCSH), da Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Professora associada com agregação do Departamento de História.Foi Investigadora e Presidente do Instituto de História Contemporânea da FCSH (até novembro de 2015), foi coordenadora do Programa Pedro Hispano – Estudos Doutorais em Ciências Sociais e Humanas da mesma faculdade.Foi membro do Conselho Consultivo do Programa Gulbenkian de Língua e Cultura Portuguesas da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.Coordenou projetos de investigação e tem vários textos publicados nas áreas de investigação de História de Portugal no século XX, História da economia e da sociedade no Portugal contemporâneo e História da inovação e da organização da ciência em Portugal.


José Pacheco Pereira


Heitor Alvelos, PhD (RCA 2003), MFA (SAIC 1992) curates futureplaces since its inception in 2008, and has been a team member of the UTAustin-Portugal program in digital media since 2006. Heitor is currently a Professor of Design and New Media at the University of Porto, Course Director of the PhD Design program (U.Porto/U.Aveiro/UPTEC), Director of ID+, Institute for Research in Design, Media and Culture, at U.Porto, and Member of Academia Europaea since 2015. Heitor is Chairman of the Scientific Board for Humanities and Social Sciences at the Foundation for Science and Technology since 2016 (Board member since 2010). He ran the Drawing Studio of the Royal College of Art from 1999 to 2001, and has lectured in four continents since 2001. As a designer/media operator, Heitor has exhibited extensively in four continents and released sound pieces on Ash International, Touch, Cronica Electronica and The Tapeworm. Multimedia work since 1999 includes collaborations with Jon Wozencroft, Fennesz, Biosphere, Russell Mills, Lol Coxhill, Philip Marshall, Jono Podmore, Anabela Duarte, Pangeia, Tuxedomoon, Laura Malacart, Morgan O’Hara, Max Eastley, Rafael Toral and BJNilsen.


Fátima São Simão (Porto, 1981) is the director of development of UPTEC – the Science and Technology Park of the University of Porto (uptec.up.pt), supporting the development of its creative projects and startups and coordinating its communication strategy. She has also been the executive manager of futureplaces.org – medialab for citizenship and the public lead of Creative Commons Portugal.
Fátima completed her degree in Economics at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Porto and did her MA in Cultural Policy and Management, at City University of London. She is currently a PhD student in Art and Design, at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, researching about the economic and creative effects of copyright in the Portuguese cultural and creative sector.


Anselmo Canha is a musician and graphic designer. He began his participation in Futureplaces by bringing together the musicians of the Stop Shopping Mall in a concert that occupied all the floors of this bankrupt commercial space. This happened in the first editions, in 2008 and 2009. Since that time, he has participated in all editions, contributing in the organization of sound fronts. Anselmo completed his Master’s dissertation on Image Design, at FBAUP, in 2008, dedicated to the same Shopping Mall. He recently delivered his PhD thesis, also at FBAUP, dedicated to the relationship between the experimental creative act and the common good, studied in specific cases in the city of Porto. Anselmo coordinates Rádio Manobras, a community radio station that also documents Futureplaces under the name of Rádio Manobras Futuras.


Luís Barbosa lives and works in Porto where he was born in 1975. His work includes professional photography, teaching at the Portuguese Institute of Photography and freelance documentary.


Alba Plaza is a Spanish graphic designer and lover of kingfishers and Kate Bush songs. Always looking out new projects, little after arriving to Porto in 2016 she felt the need for making a catalogue with tiles that cover the façades of Porto, helping these designs not to be forgotten.


Ana Clara Nunes Roberti (1991), Brazilian, based in Porto, is a PhD researcher on documentaries. She holds a graduation in Social Communication and a Master Degree in Image Design She worked as director in documentaries presented and awarded in different festivals, participated in fiction movies performing different roles, and also created photography and video exhibitions. She has lived in Sicily (Italy) and worked as a volunteer on diferente social projects. She also work with radio and writting. She attends the PhD Design (University of Porto, FCT, UPTEC, University of Aveiro).


Ana Rita Costa. Multimedia producer with a passion for film and most nerdy things. Graduated from FLUP in Communication Sciences and Multimedia after a study exchange at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Currently exploring virtual reality and storytelling whilst attending the Masters in Multimedia at FEUP.


António Castro is a freelance videographer. Master in Image Design FBAUP (2012).  Team member for Documentar o Manobras, 2012/2013. Since then he has been working in developing commercial and documentary videos.


António Coelho is Assistant Professor at the Department of Informatics Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, where he teaches in the areas of Computer Graphics, Programming and Digital Games. He is also the director of the Doctoral Program in Digital Media at the University of Porto, member of the Board of Advisors of the governmental program UT Austin | Portugal and member of the Board of Advisors of the MIL (Media Innovation Lab) of UP where he coordinates the Digital Media Learning Lab (DMLL). António Coelho is also a senior researcher at INESC TEC, coordinating the Computer and Graphics and Virtual Environments area of the Centre for Information Systems and Computer Graphics  (CSIG). He is actively involved in several research projects (from H2020 European projects to I&DT projects with the industry) and PhD supervisions, focused in the areas of Computer Graphics (Virtual Reality and Procedural Modeling), Serious Games (Procedural Content Generation, Mobile Gaming and Games-based Learning) and Geospatial Systems (Location-based Systems and Spatial Databases).


César Lugo-Elías. PhD Researcher at the International Doctoral Program in Design at the University of Porto, Portugal. His current research explores Design as trigger of social hedonistic practices involving the consumption of electronic dance music. He has a M.A. in Interaction Design and Design Research (2015) and a B.A. in Metal Design (2012) from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HAWK) in Hildesheim, Germany; as well as a degree (Licenciatura) in Cultural Heritage Conservation (2006) at the School of Conservation (ECRO), in Guadalajara, Mexico. He has worked for institutions such as the National Museum of the American Indian of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.; the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in Mexico; and collaborated with Agencies and Design Studios in Hamburg, Germany and Budapest, Hungary -where he lived for a period of time in 2012. His current doctoral research project is granted in Portugal by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). He has been also granted by the Andrew W. Mellow Foundation and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). He was nominated to the German Design Award 2016 by the German Design Council in the category Newcomer and was member of the German Society of Design Research and Design Theory (DGTF) from 2012 to 2013. Besides his research activities, César develops artistic and design practices under the pseudonym “O Santo”. http://www.osantocesar.com/


Cláudia Raquel Lima is a Professor of Design, Typography and Drawing at Universidade Lusófona do Porto. She is also a freelance photographer, having specialised in surf photography. In recent years, her work was published in major Portuguese magazines and web platforms devoted to surfing, presented at photography exhibitions and was distinguished by Canon in 2017. She has a PhD in Digital Media (University of Porto, 2015) where she researched communication practices of public libraries on the web and specially through the use of web 2.0 technologies. As a result of her research, the book “Biblioteca em Rede: Comunicação Integrada no Contexto das Culturas Participativas“ [Library Network: Integrated communication in the context of participatory cultures] was published in 2015.


Daniel Brandão is from Porto, teaches Design at IPCA, ESAP and ESAD, holds a PhD in Digital Media and is a freelance Communication Designer. He is the author of Museum of Ransom (www.museudoresgate.org), a participatory website which aggregates video made by citizens as cultural heritage.


Daniel Pinheiro was born in Venezuela, and currently lives and works from Portugal. Graduated in Theater also developed his skills in the fields of Video Editing, Media, Performance Art and Networked Performance. As an independent artist and researcher his work bounces between the experimentation with video and how it transforms the perception of the self through different techniques. Since 2011 his work has greatly focused on the Internet as a medium and video as format to mediate communication and emulate presence. Although video itself and the editing process are essential tools to operate and produce video works that fall on categories such as video and queer art, it also serves an essential purpose that is to have the “camera” as a spectator of actions.


Eduardo Magalhães holds a Bachelor´s Degree by the Higher School for Music and Entertainment Arts (ESMAE). He earned his Master´s Degree in Multimedia- Interactive Music and Sound Design, by the Faculty of Engineering, at the University of Porto, where he is presently developing his PHD Thesis in the field of exploration and sound interaction design for immersive, virtual environments. He has developed his activity as a professor and researcher, having taken part in parallel projects of independent cinema, dance, digital games and virtual reality, as well as in the production of musical projects, be they of music by his own authorship, or of other artists. He has also been involved in experimental projects to build sound installations and field recordings. He is currently lecturing at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto and at University Lusófona.


Eduardo Morais (Porto, 1979) is a full-time PhD researcher on Digital Media as applied to arts education. A filmmaker at heart, also taught for more than a decade courses related to both Cinema and Digital Art at ESAP and FBAUP. Also likes challenging assumptions and pub quizzes.


Joaquín R. Díaz was born in Mexico City (1982). He is working on Interactive Art and Robotics studying through the relation performance and robotics the relation society and robotics. He is doing his PHD in Research in Arts Humanities and Education at University of Castilla La Mancha (with the support of CONACYT). He recently finished an interchange in the Digital Media Program at FEUP-FBAUP (Porto, Portugal).  He finished his Masters in Visual Arts at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), cum laude for his thesis Programmable Artwork.  He was research assistant at the Bio-robotics Laboratory at Engineering Faculty at UNAM. He studied his Bachelor in Visual Arts at UNAM with a major in sculpture, photography and qualified in stage design. He has have participated in several exhibitions in México, Spain and Italy as well as produced and coproduced Exhibitions and Electroacoustic Music Concerts. Joaquín also has full experience teaching arts and multimedia in México as well as in Spain and co-wrote the high school books Secundaria Comunitaria Libro Multigrado, in the area of fine arts, for the CONAFE, México.  http://joaquindiazduran-carpeta.blogspot.pt/


José Carneiro is an Assistant Professor at Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, teachingDesign, Photography and Cinema. I am also Director of the Master in Image Designand the Centre for Studies in Design and Art at FBAUP. A member of theresearch institute ID+ and collaborator of i2ADS, he completed his MastersDegree in 2005 and PhDin January 2014 (FBAUP).


Luísa Sequeira. Filmmaker and cultural producer. Luísa Sequeira studied journalism and specialized in directing documentaries, starting her career in Mozambique, worked on TV for ten years at RTP.Since 2010, she is  artistic director of Shortcutz Porto and organizes Super 9 Mobile Film Fest, a festival exclusively dedicated to mobile films. Author and director of  “Porto sem Nó”, winner at the 2011 edition of International Television Festival in Rio De Janeiro. Co-directed with plastic artist Sama  TV series “Motel Sama” for Canal Brasil.  Directed “ Os Cravos e a Rocha”, a documentary about the iconoclastic Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha and his involvement in the revolution of the 25th of April .In 2016 she directed the experimental film “ La Luna”.  She is producing and directing with Luisa Marinho and Ana Luísa Amaral “  What can words do? “ about the New Portuguese Letters ,   the film weighs in on the actual importance of the book in Portuguese society – before and after the Carnation Revolution – and on the countries where it was edited, read & known as political, literary and feminist manifest. Current, is finish with Sama the documentary ” Nada a Temer” about the Brazilian political situation. Soon, Luísa will debut her first feature film, “Who is Barbara Virginia?, a documentary about the first portuguese female filmmaker.


Manuela Matos Monteiro studied Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Porto, was a teacher of secondary education, a teacher trainer and has performed several functions for the Ministry of Education. She is the author of several books on Psychology, Psychosociology and Pedagogy published by Porta Editora. She coordinated NETPROF – Clube dos Professores Portugueses on the Internet and directed 2:PONTOS magazine.In addition to participating in congresses and conferences with communications, she is the author of several articles and essays in several publications. Since the 70’s he has developed photographic work and has participated in collective and individual exhibitions.She has won several prizes in contests and has already exhibited in Portugal, Brussels (European Parliament), Mozambique (Maputo and Beira), France (Paris and Bordeaux), Florence, Berlin (two photography biennials 2013 and 2016), Miami, Kansas City among others . She directs since 2013, with João Lafuente, the galleries Espaço MIRA, MIRA FORUM and since April 2017 the gallery MIRA | performative arts.


Marisa Ferreira is a cultural producer who has worked extensively in theatre and music at various renowned festivals and events in Porto. She is a founding member of Radio Manobras and Os Azulejos do Porto among other projects.


Miguel Januário nasceu no Porto em 1981. É licenciado em Design de Comunicação na Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto. Desde 1998 que desenvolve graffiti e intervenções no espaço público e em 2005, no âmbito académico,  criou o projecto de intervenção ‘±MAISMENOS±, que se tornou uma referência no panorama nacional e internacional da street art. Colabora com o espaço Maus Hábitos, no Porto, onde teve o seu primeiro estúdio e é membro da Associação Saco Azul, dinamizadora de diversas actividades artísticas. Entre 2009 e 2014 viveu em Lisboa e foi director artístico na Ivity Brand Corp durante dois anos. A partir de 2014 estabelece estúdio no Porto, dedicando-se quase exclusivamente ao seu trabalho pessoal ‘±’, levando este projecto a outros países e marcando o seu lugar na cena artística internacional. Actualmente frequenta o doutoramento em Design na Faculdade de Belas Artes do Porto. O seu trabalho artístico já teve exposto em várias galerias nacionais e internacionais, destacando-se a galeria Vera Cortes em Lisboa, a Caixa Cultural no Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo e Brasília, a galeria Wunderkammern em Roma e o Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Roma. Tem diversas obras na colecção António Cachola do Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Elvas e é representado pela Galeria Underdogs de Lisboa.


Pedro Cardoso is a designer. He holds a PhD on Art and Design, a MA on Image Design and a BA on Communication Design. He is a researcher at ID+, Research Institute for Design, Media and Culture, studying video games in the context of interaction and game design. He is a guest assistant professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto. http://pcardoso.tumblr.com


Rogério Nuno Costa is a Portuguese performance artist based in Helsinki (Finland). His work deals with the major concept of documentation when applied to ephemeral performative actions. His performances, videos, conferences, show cases, installations and texts explore the fields of theatre, movement, visual arts, literature, philosophy and anthropology, interconnecting public and private contexts, autobiographical discourses and informational/communicational strategies: social networking, advertising, conceptual propaganda, guerrilla art, piracy. Apart from his own performance work, he has been several times invited to write and direct theatre and dance performances for other artists and companies, also working as a dramaturgist and artistic consultant. He’s also a researcher, a curator, a writer and a “conceptual” chef. Major in Communication and Journalism, has studied Contemporary Art History and Contemporary Culture & New Technologies. Currently, he is teaching a theatre direction laboratory to the Major in Theatre at Universidade do Minho (Guimarães, Portugal), and is also doing research within the frame of Visual Culture and Contemporary Art (ViCCA) MA program at Aalto University’s School of Arts, Design and Architecture (Helsinki, Finland), developing a series of meta-pedagogical activities concerning the Year One of his project “University/Yliopisto“. Associated artist at Ballet Contemporâneo do Norte.


Rui Penha. Composer, media artist and performer of electroacoustic music, Rui Penha was born in Porto in 1981. He completed his PhD in Music (Composition) at the University of Aveiro. His music is regularly recorded and played in festivals and concert halls around Europe and North America, by musicians such as Arditti Quartet, Peter Evans, Remix Ensemble or the Gulbenkian Orchestra. He was a founder and curator of Digitópia (Casa da Música) and has a deep interest on the relationship between music And its technology. His recent production includes interfaces for musical expression, sound spatialization software, interactive installations, musical robots, autonomous improvisers and educational software. He taught at several Portuguese Institutions (DeCA – UA, ESMAE – IPP, ESART – IPCB, ULP), and is currently an invited assistant professor at FEUP and researcher at INESC TEC.


Sara Moreira is currently researching communication strategies for the commons collaborative economy as a PhD student on Information and Knowledge Society at IN3 / UOC. She is mostly interested in agroecology, post-digital media and community governance of shared resources. Previously she has worked as an editor for Global Voices (2010-2014), as a journalist and data analyst in cross-border investigative projects – Generation E (2014) and Youth in Play (2015) –, as a consultant for the Transition Network (2016) in a project to expand its global translation capacities, and frequently as a writer, translator, web developer and trainer (with experience in Timor-Leste, Mozambique, Sao Tome & Principe, Germany and Portugal). Her background is in Informatics and Computing Engineering (BSc+MSc/FEUP). + info: saritamoreira.com


Soraia Ferreira is a Story Strategy Consultant and Trainer at Yellow Pictures which areas of expertise include brand/business storytelling and transmedia storytelling. She is also an Invited Assistant Professor at the Master in Multimedia – University of Porto, teaching transmedia storytelling, interactive storytelling and documentary. Soraia holds a Ph.D. in Digital Media – Audiovisual and Interactive Content Creation with Distinction from University of Porto where she researched location based transmedia storytelling in tourism, a Cinema Studies Master from Lusófona University and a Business Administration Degree from the Catholic Portuguese University.


Tiago Dias dos Santos holds a graduation in Audiovisual Communication Technologies and Master in Multimedia. He has collaborated in different audiovisual, cultural and artistic projects between Antwerp, Berlin and London, and is now in Porto as an Audiovisual and Cultural Producer, focusing on documentary, citizen journalism, ethnography, urban anthropology and storytelling.


Vanessa Rodrigues, story hunter, journalist, documentarian. She is a PhD candidate on documentary for social change and has been working with docs in Jordan, Brazil and Portugal. She holds a specialization in Documentary from Academia de cinema de São Paulo and expertize in dramaturgy and Scriptwriting for documentary cinema by EICTV- Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV, Cuba. She also teaches journalism and cyber journalism at Universidade Lusófona do Porto. Loves liquid horizons, sunsets, storytelling and long sequence shots.


Vijay Patel. Multimedia artist with a deep interest in citizenship, identity and equality. Graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London with study exchange at the New York Studio School. Currently completing a Masters in Multimedia at FEUP. Exhibitions include; White on White: Beyond Malevich (Pecci Museum of Contemporary Art, Milan), Continuum (People’s History Museum, Manchester) and Fait Accompli (Block60, Rimini). Films screened at various international film festivals in Berlin, London, New York and São Paulo. Commissioners include; UK Channel 4 and Ralph Lauren.