Email: vja27@cam.ac.uk

PhD Student in Portuguese

Supervisor: 

Maite Conde

College:

Newnham

Research Topic:

Material Virtuality: Remaking Rio de Janeiro’s Past and Present through Digital Media.

About:

In 2015, Victoria graduated with a First-Class BA (Hons) degree in Hispanic Studies and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies from King’s College London. She completed an MPhil in Latin American Studies with Distinction at Cambridge University, supported by the Newton Trust and Newnham College, in 2016. After graduating, she worked as an English teacher in Spain, Portugal and the UK.

Victoria’s doctorate is funded by a Vice-Chancellor’s and Newnham College Scholarship. Victoria’s doctoral research investigates how questions of memory are negotiated in contemporary Rio de Janeiro using digital media.

Teaching Interests:

Brazilian cultural studies, translation

Research Interests:

Brazilian cultural studies, memory, heritage, the virtual

Research:

Victoria’s doctoral thesis examines how a selection of cultural-historical projects use digital media to explore the past of the city and state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. These include: Instagram pages, virtual museums, walking-tour initiatives and memory tourism apps. 

Victoria’s research responds to and considers the intersection of two key phenomena in Rio. First, how, in recent decades, Brazil’s authorities have begun to regard select aspects of the country’s past as sources of cultural and economic value. Second, how a boom in Brazil’s consumer economy in the late 2000s has made smart phones and social media ubiquitous. 

The thesis argues that, through their exploration of Rio’s past, each of the projects it examines shape how people engage with the space of the city and state. This analysis of how digital media intervene in the production of Rio’s space contributes to scholarship that explores Rio’s urban and cultural history. It also adds to literature exploring how the screens of digital media spaces form an integral and constitutive part of the space of contemporary cities.

The thesis specifically contends that the projects it examines all reflect and remake contemporary understandings of how Rio should be in ways that are contingent upon and shaped by the material context(s) from which they emerge, namely, the city’s enduring history of racialised urbanism, its authorities’ shifting attitude to the past, and changes in Brazil’s approach to cultural funding following its return to democracy in the late 1980s. Through analysis of the impact of these factors and from the perspective of a city in the Global South, the thesis dialogues with a growing literature in media studies that examines how the historicity of different forms of technology shapes their affordances. 

Victoria’s broader research interests include Brazilian cultural studies, digital cultures, memory studies, and heritage studies. 

Scholarships/Prizes

2019      Gibson Spanish Scholarship (University of Cambridge)

2019     Santander Travel Grant (University of Cambridge)

2018     Vice-Chancellor’s and Newnham College Scholarship (University of Cambridge)

2016     Santander Travel Grant and Simón Bolívar Fund Award (University of Cambridge)

2015     Newton College Masters Studentship (University of Cambridge)

2015     Baroness Von Schlippenbach Prize (King’s College London)

2012     King’s myScholarship (King’s College London)

2012     Baroness Von Schlippenbach Prize (King’s College London)

2012     Sambrooke Exhibitions (King’s College London)

2012     Janet Perry Prize (King’s College London)

Fellowships:

Victoria is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Teaching:

Victoria currently lectures, supervises, and leads seminars on the following papers:

• PG4: Lusophone History, Culture and Politics’ (fourth-year undergraduate paper)
• PG1: Introduction to the Languages, Literatures and Cultures of the Portuguese-Speaking Countries (second-year undergraduate paper). 
• Her teaching interests include Brazilian cultural studies, Lusophone cultural studies, and translation. 

Published works:

Adams, Victoria. 2022. ‘Fear, Funding and Fans: Rolé Carioca’s Walking Tours and Infrastructures of Flânerie’, Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, 9.1: 131–53. https://doi.org/10.1386/jucs_00052_1

———. 2021. ‘Urban Reforms, Cultural Goods and the Valongo Wharf Circle: Understanding Intervention in Rio de Janeiro’s Port Area’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 40.5: 696–711. https://doi.org/10.1111/blar.13183

Translations:

Adriano, Carlos. 2022. ‘The Poetics of Found Footage as an Instance of Film Poetry: A  Study of a Personal Case’, in The Poetry-Film Nexus in Latin America: Exploring Intermediality on Page and Screen, ed. by Ben Bollig and David M. J. Wood, trans. by Victoria Adams (Cambridge: Legenda), pp. 82–109 

de Oliveira, Eduardo Jorge. 2019. ‘How to Build Cathedrals. Cildo Meireles: A Sensory Geography of Brazil’, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 28.4, trans. by Victoria Adams: 607–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/13569325.2019.1637337