Dr Estêvão Cabral has a PhD in Political Science from Lancaster University, UK. His doctoral
studies were funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Portuguese Government, Science
and Technology Foundation). He has done research on the political history of East-Timor, on
literacy during the years of Resistance to the Indonesian invasion and occupation of East-Timor
and on language policy in East-Timor. He was an Associate Research Fellow in the Department of
Politics and International Relations, Lancaster University, from October 2002 to September 2005, a
Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of International Politics at the University of Wales,
Aberystwyth, from September 2003 to September 2006 and then an Honorary Research Fellow at
the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham.
In 2004, he was awarded a British Academy grant to conduct post-doctoral fieldwork in
East-Timor. In 2009, he was appointed, as a post-doctoral researcher, to a research project at
Tilburg University, The Netherlands, entitled: Becoming a nation of readers in East-Timor:
Language policy and adult literacy development in a multilingual context. The project was funded
by a Dutch funding body (NWO/WOTRO Science for Global Development, Project Number: WO1
65.315.00). In this project, Dr Cabral had the main responsibility for one of the sub-projects
incorporated into the wider project. This sub-project traced the history of adult literacy in EastTimor, focusing in particular on the adult literacy campaign of 1974/5, which was inspired by the
work of the Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire. The research involved oral history interviews in EastTimor and Portugal and archival research.
Publications
Cabral, E. and Martin-Jones, M. (forthcoming – 2016) Moving north, navigating new worlds of
work and re-mooring: language and semiotic resources in the migration trajectories of EastTimorese in the UK. To appear in: C. Kerfoot and K. Hyltenstam (eds.) Entangled discourses, southnorth orders of visibility, New York: Routledge.
Cabral, E. (forthcoming – 2016) Life and death in the mountains of Timor-Leste: The case of Ponta
Leste. (Special panel on “1975 – 40 years on”). In M. Leach, A.B da Silva, N. Canas Mendes, S.
Smith, A. da Costa Ximenes and C. Fernandes (eds.) Timor-Leste: the local, the regional and the
global: Proceedings of the TLSA (Timor-Leste Studies Association) conference, 2015. Published by
Swinburne University, Australia.
Cabral, E. and Martin-Jones, M. (forthcoming – 2016) Language and cultural resources in the
construction of new diasporic spaces: Young migrants from Timor-Leste in the UK. In M. Leach, A.B
da Silva, N.Canas Mendes, S. Smith, A. da Costa Ximenes and C. Fernandes (eds.) Timor-Leste: the
local, the regional and the global: Proceedings of the TLSA (Timor-Leste Studies Association)
conference, 2015. Published by Swinburne University, Australia.
Cabral, E. (forthcoming – 2016) Timor-Leste 1974/5: Decolonisation, a nation-in-waiting and an
adult literacy campaign. International Journal of the Sociology of Language. (Special issue on
“Discourses about literacy: critical, historical and ethnographic research in Brazil, Portugal and
Timor-Leste”).
Cabral, E. and Martin-Jones (Forthcoming - 2016) Paths to multilingualism? Reflections on
developments in language-in-education policy and practice in East-Timor. In C. Stroud, L. Wee and
L. Lim (eds.) The multilingual citizen. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Cabral (2013) “The development of language policy in a global age”. In J. Arthur Shoba and F.
Chimbutane (eds.) Bilingual education and language policy in the global south. New York:
Routledge, 83 – 103.
Cabral, E. and M. Martin-Jones (2012) “Discourses about literacy and about liberation interwoven:
recollections of the adult literacy campaign initiated in 1974/5”. In M. Leach, N.Canas Mendes, A.B
da Silva, B. Boughton and A. da Costa Ximenes (eds.) New research on Timor-Leste, 342 – 348.
Proceedings of the TLSA (Timor-Leste Studies Association) conference, 2011. Published by
Swinburne University, Australia.
Cabral, E. and Martin-Jones, M. (2008) “Writing the Resistance: Literacy in East Timor 1975-1999”.
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 11 (2), 149-169 (Special Issue on
‘Political Economies of Literacy in Southeast Asia’ edited by C. Stroud and L. Wee).
Cabral, E. (2003) “Portugal and East-Timor: a politics of ambivalence and a late awakening”.
Portuguese Studies Review, 11, (1), 29 – 47.
Cabral, E. (2000) “The Indonesian propaganda war against East-Timor”. In P. Hainsworth and S.
McCloskey (eds.) The East-Timor crisis: the struggle for independence from Indonesia. London, I.
B. Tauris, 69 – 84.