Messengers from the Stars

Messengers from the Stars is an interdisciplinary project on Science Fiction (SF) and Fantasy that aims at exploring the importance of SF and Fantasy in contemporaneity and how these genres reflect present anxieties, fears and tensions. Its goal is to progressively extend its reach to the community so as to promote the study of SF and Fantasy, fostering a dialogue opened to different fields of knowledge (science, literature, culture, technologies).
Since its creation, in 2009, the group has been establishing a network of both national and international partners, working together in encouraging the study of SF and Fantasy. Aiming at encouraging a critically engaged society, Messengers from the Stars benefits from SF and Fantasy’s growing popularity to enquire how these genres have the ability to raise fundamental questions about our human condition and depict (possible) alternative worlds that contribute to the necessary rethinking of society’s concrete challenges.

The project promotes the following activities:

• the Messengers from the Stars International Conference [http://messengersfromthestars.letras.ulisboa.pt], held every two years, since 2010;
• an online, peer-reviewed, open-access journal (messengersfromthestars.letras.ulisboa.pt), since 2016;
• “Science Fiction and Fantasy in English” undergraduate course, at the School of Arts and Humanities – Ulisboa;
• open lectures and short-term courses, aimed at undergraduate students and researchers alike.

Other ULICES projects

• The British Empire: Ideologies, Perspectives and Perceptions | Victorians Like Us
• Intercultural Literature in Portugal, 1930-2000: A Critical Bibliography
• Project in Medical Humanities
• Creative Cultures: Cities, Trends, Strategies – C3
• The Street and the City
• RHOME – Representations of Home
• Dictionary of North-American Studies in Portugal
• IndirecTrans 3
• Remembering the Past, Learning for the Future: Research-Based Digital Learning from Testimonies of Survivors and Rescuers of the Holocaust
• (Re)imagining Shared Pasts Over the Sea and Across Borders
• Receiving | Perceiving English Literature in the Digital Age
• Contar um Conto / Storytelling
• Literary and Cultural Tourism