João Fusco Ribeiro is a research fellow at the Political Science Research Center (CICP) at the University of Évora in Portugal and, currently, a visiting researcher at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw. He holds a MA in African Historical Studies (2016) and a PhD in Contemporary History (2023) from the University of Évora. In his PhD thesis, he examined the armed guerrilla struggle of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) against Portuguese colonial rule, which earned an honorable mention from the Mário Soares Foundation Prize (2025). From 2020 to 2023 he was a Doctoral Fellow funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT-Portugal). Prior to that, he worked as a Junior Researcher (2017–2020) on the FCT-funded project "Historical Sources of Transnational Regionalism in Southern Africa: The Liberation Movements and White Africa as Driving Forces (1960–1980)". His research focuses on African liberation movements, the decolonization process in Lusophone Africa and its interconnections with anti-colonial support networks from Eastern Europe. As a visiting researcher at the GHI, Dr. Ribeiro is working on the project “East-South Socialist Solidarity: The PZPR-MPLA Partnership during the Anti-Colonial Struggle and the Decolonization Process of Angola (1966-1977)".

Selected Publications

• Helder Adegar Fonseca & João Fusco Ribeiro, "Communists as Agents of Decolonization in Angola's Complex Transition to Independence (1974-1977): A Comparative Approach" in Communist Actors in African Decolonial Transitions - A Comparison (1957-1994), Berlin, De Gruyter, 2025.

• João Fusco Ribeiro & Jéssica da Silva Höring, "The Emergence of a Third Liberation Movement in Angola: The Founding History of UNITA (1964-1996)" in Journal of Southern African Studies, 2025.

• João Fusco Ribeiro, "Book Review: 'Globalizing Independence Struggles of Lusophone África: Anticolonial and Postcolonial Politics'" in Nordic Journal of African Studies, 2025.

• João Fusco Ribeiro, "Intra-Nationalist Fighting in the Angolan Liberation Struggle: Exploring the Case of the Eastern Front (1966-1974)" in Vienna Journal of African Studies, 2024.

• João Fusco Ribeiro, "UNITA, China and the Soviet Bloc: Rivalries, Constraints and Cooperation (1964-1974)" in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and África: New Perspectives on the Era of Decolonizaation, 1950s to 1990s, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2023.