Agostinho is in the Department of Geography and the Environment at Loughborough University. His research traces the links between contested histories, artmaking and visuality as tools for Black identity and place-making in post-independence Jamaica. Agostinho's thesis is entitled: ‘Geographies of Struggle: History, Art and Nationhood in Post/colonial and Post-independence Jamaica, 2000-Present’. He has degrees in Communications and Media Studies. Before his PhD, Agostinho was a development and environmental communication specialist. He worked in media and public relations in the Caribbean and South America, respectively, and was awarded the 2018 Organisation of American States (OAS) Scholarship for Fieldwork Training at the Florida International University (FIU). Agostinho was an International Visitor (IV) Grant awardee from the United States Department of State. He is a co-convenor of the Global Black Geographies (GBG) Collective, an international reading group radically rethinking Black and postcolonial theory. Agostinho writes about popular culture and is a published short fiction author. He speaks two languages – English and Jamaican Creole – and has a reading proficiency in Spanish.
Agostinho’s research traces the links between contested histories, artmaking and visuality as tools for Black identity and place-making in post-independence Jamaica. Agostinho's thesis is entitled: ‘Geographies of Struggle: History, Art and Nationhood in Post/colonial and Post-independence Jamaica, 2000-Present’.
Research Questions:
- What role, if any, do Jamaican dance practices play in contesting modern histories of Jamaican nationhood?
- How are Jamaica’s ‘lost, hidden and submerged geographies’ of Blackness recovered in contemporary expressions of the visual and performing arts?
- Do state sanctioned notions of Jamaican identity (re)produce coloniality and anti-Black racism? If so, how and why?
PGR Supervisors: Professor Marsha Meskimmon and Dr Marion Arnold
Publications and Conferences:
- Book Chapter – (July 2020) ‘A uman wi niem!’: Sexual desire,dancehall culture and the poetics of ‘badness’ in the works of Lady Saw and Tanya Stephens. In The Dancehall Reader, UWI Press, Mona
- Book Review – ‘Intellectual friendship and the politics of listening: Thinking with Stuart Hall’s Voice’. In Journal of Postcolonial Studies, July 14, 2020 (https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2020.1790821 )
- Peer-Reviewed Article –‘Black Hypocrisy’ and the (Re-)Making of Black Geographies in Jamaican Dancehall Popular Culture’ – (accepted/under review by International Association of Popular Music (IASPM Journal)
- Short Story – “We want justice!” (November 2018; https://preelit.com/2018/11/13/we-want-justice/)
Conference Papers:
- (Feb. 2021):‘Un/settled Multi-culturalism: 2020 Transruptions in of Times of Crisis’, Stephen Lawrence Research Centre, De Montfort University, UK – Paper presented in Seminar Two (February 10, 2020) entitled: ‘You can’t have Black man in space!’: Geographic Notes on Becoming British in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe’.
- (Nov. 2019) – ASWAD Conference, VA, USA – Paper presented entitled: ‘Black Hypocrisy’ the (Re)making of Black Geographies:Interrogatingdesire and the geographies of Blackness in contemporary Dancehall culture. Paper submitted for publication to IASPM Journal.
- (Feb. 2019) – 5th Annual Post-graduate Conference of the Society of Caribbean Studies, University of Birmingham, UK – Paper presented entitled: ‘Geographies of Contestation and the Fictions of a National History:Dance, Visuality and Jamaican Popular Culture (2003-Present)’.