Feature Stories 2026: Professor Emerita of Portuguese Anna Klobucka honored at Oxford University tribute symposium

Anna Klobucka, commonwealth emerita professor of Portuguese and women's and gender studies at UMass Dartmouth, was honored at a tribute symposium hosted by Oxford University on January 16th. The colloquium was dedicated to Klobucka's research on Lusophone literatures and cultures.

Klobucka, who recently won the UMass Dartmouth 2025 Graduate Research Mentor of the Year Award, traveled to Oxford, England to attend the symposium. The colloquium brought together Lusophone studies scholars who have been inspired by Klobucka’s work to present panels and roundtables.

What does it mean for you to receive this honor?

“It was a joyful and enormously gratifying experience to learn of this initiative, and even more rewarding to attend the symposium and listen to so many brilliant scholars—some of whom were my long-standing collaborators and friends and others whom I first met on this occasion—engage with my scholarship or discuss related topics in eye-opening ways I myself could not have anticipated,” Klobucka said.

Studying and teaching Lusophone culture

“I'm not the most typical person in this field. As a Polish-born academic working in the U.S., I work at a double remove from the cultural and geographic terrain I study. But this positionality is in good part what makes my work so stimulating and exciting; it combines the thrill of constant learning with the epistemological advantage of being able to approach exhaustively studied and seemingly settled matters from the vantage point of cognitive innocence, so to speak.

“The Portuguese-speaking world is vast, diverse, and endlessly fascinating—my research has focused primarily on modern Portugal, but I have taught undergraduate and graduate classes encompassing Brazil and Africa as well, and historical periods from the Middle Ages to the present.”

What advice might you give to aspiring academics in this field?

“The most important thing is to engage with subjects and topics that genuinely interest and draw you, which to my mind is the necessary precondition (though not a guarantee) for producing innovative rather than derivative knowledge.”

What is special about working at UMass Dartmouth?

“I chose to come to UMass Dartmouth from the University of Georgia as a recently tenured associate professor because of the on- and off-campus environment,” she said.

“Teaching, researching, and living as a Lusophone studies specialist and enthusiast is so much richer and more stimulating here, thanks to the diversity our region's Portuguese American, Cabo Verdean, and Brazilian immigrant demographics and the university's commitment to community engagement.

“This has been our greatest advantage, and I believe it will remain a continuing source of inspiration and constructive energy for Luso-Afro-Brazilian studies at UMass Dartmouth for many years to come.” 

“It was a joyful and enormously gratifying experience to learn of this initiative, and even more rewarding to attend the symposium and listen to so many brilliant scholars engage with my scholarship or discuss related topics in eye-opening ways.”