"Football, Fado, Fátima: myth or reality? Exploring Portuguese society".
Many stereotypes exist that, coming from a different era, say the
Portuguese are very invested in football, sad, melancholy music and
religion. In this session, Isabel Tallysha-Soares explores how this
stereotype came into being and whether it holds any truth in contemporary
Portuguese society. With historical roots that include rich contacts with
many peoples and cultures and living in a country that prides itself in
having the oldest borders in the world, the Portuguese are more Atlantic
than Mediterranean. Their language is a mix of influences that speak of
their history of independence and openness to the world. Let's explore a
bit who the Portuguese really are (we promise no definitive answers!)

Isabel Tallysha-Soares is a German-born Portuguese writer and award-winning
academic. She is a Professor at the University of Lisbon and Vice-President
of the School for Social and Political Sciences of that university. She
studied experimental literature at the Catholic University of Eichstätt in
Germany and has a PhD in Anglo-Portuguese Studies by Universidade Nova in
Portugal. Her research interests include literary journalism and cultural
studies and she is a founding member of the International Association for
Literary Journalism Studies and its president from 2016 to 2018. She also
teaches Portuguese language and culture to foreign students but no one
would say that Portuguese is not her birth language. As a writer, she
publishes novels with a touch of magical realism that she calls
semi-fiction because they are always inspired by real events and people.
Her first novel has meantime been translated in English and published by a
British publisher as "I, from Nothing", a fictionalised account of her
family from the early 19th to the late 20th centuries. She loves Portugal
and doesn't imagine living anywhere else.