Culture & Education
Journal & Student Award
Promoting Portuguese heritage, championing scholarship, and connecting cultural advocates across generations.
Articles
The APS Journal
A platform for cultural commentary, diplomatic insight, educational exchange and social reflection – celebrating the richness of the Anglo-Portuguese relationship from many perspectives. Contributions are welcome from members, academics and friends of the Society.
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Annual Prize
The Ann Waterfall Student Award
Originally named the "Best Student of Portuguese Prize", this award was established by the Anglo-Portuguese Society to recognise exceptional achievement in the study of the Portuguese language and culture. The winner receives £1,000.
In 2011 the award was renamed the Ann Waterfall Award, in tribute to Ann Waterfall, the Society's longest-serving secretary, who dedicated 20 years of service to the Society. Since 2020 it has been proudly sponsored by Caixa Geral de Depósitos, the national bank of Portugal.
"The award serves as a testament to our mission of fostering educational exchanges and recognising the importance of language proficiency and cultural understanding between the United Kingdom and Portugal."
Nominations
Nominations are presented to a selection panel of an academic and two members of the Society's Executive Committee. The eligibility guidelines were updated in 2014 to reflect the expansion of Lusophone Studies and Portuguese language learning in the UK.
- Students must be in their final year at a UK university, studying topics related to Portugal.
- The prizewinner is chosen on the basis of references from two of the undergraduate's academic tutors (full-time staff).
- The Society's decision is final; where candidates are of equal merit, preference is given to those aiming to continue their Portuguese studies at postgraduate level.
- The award is presented by a representative of the Society at a mutually agreed date at one of the Society's events.
Annual Prize Value
Ann Waterfall Award
Awarded annually · Est. 1990
Supported by Caixa Geral de Depósitos
Recent Winners
Full Chronology (PDF) →Ana Torres
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Having grown up in a bilingual English-Spanish environment, my passion for language learning is not surprising. I decided to study Portuguese ab-initio and French at Queen's University Belfast in 2018, and since then the Portuguese language has become very close to my heart.
Despite the pandemic, I was lucky enough to spend two summers in Lisbon, first in 2019 in the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, and then in 2021 in the Lusa Language School. Both experiences allowed me to improve my linguistic proficiency and deepened my passion for Portuguese culture. These experiences also motivated me to apply for Chairperson of the QUB Spanish and Portuguese Society so that I could share my love of lusophone cultures on campus. We organised events such as Brazilian Carnaval and we fundraised for Fundação Ama Orfão in Guinea Bissau.
At Queen's I was very privileged to be exposed to both European and Brazilian Portuguese. We gained an all-encompassing insight into the history and culture of the Portuguese-speaking world and were encouraged to appreciate its diversity: the fall of the Portuguese Estado Novo, the novels and short stories of Mozambican Mia Couto and Paulina Chiziane, favela representation, post-colonial cinema, modern Brazilian documentaries evaluating Bolsonaro's rise to power and much more.
In my final year, we studied decolonisation (political, military and cultural), from the 1970s to the present day, and its impact on contemporary Portugal and the former colonies in Africa. I was particularly interested in the concept of "Lusotropicalismo", a theory with a complex colonial history, and how its legacy is one that still permeates contemporary Portugal. I was so inspired that I have decided to continue my studies and will undertake a Master of Research that will enable me to explore cultural production that provides an inclusive representation of the realities of post-colonial Portugal.
I am thrilled to be the recipient of the Ann Waterfall Student Award this year. I recognise that this is a great privilege, and I would like to extend my deepest thanks to the Anglo-Portuguese Society for their consideration. I would also like to thank my dedicated lecturers and the amazing Portuguese teaching staff at Queen's for their unwavering support throughout my four years of study, especially through the most difficult period of the pandemic.
Zsofia Elek
I started studying Portuguese from scratch in my first year at the University of Edinburgh. Coming from a linguistics background, I thoroughly enjoyed learning all about the Portuguese language and its quirks. What really surprised me, however, is how much I loved finding out more about the literature and history of the Portuguese-speaking nations, from the fierce poetry of Conceição Evaristo to the haunting prose of Luis Bernardo Honwana.
In my third year, I had the opportunity to travel abroad to study at the Universidade de Lisboa. Here, I took a mixture of courses relating to both Portuguese linguistics and the Lusophone cultures. I learnt much about the deep cultural myths of Portugal in Mitos da Cultura Portuguesa and the different variations of spoken Portuguese across the country in Dialetologia. It was at this University that I first heard about the Mirandese linguistic community that lives in the Northeast of Portugal.
I have always been fascinated by linguistic minorities and as such, I decided to focus my final-year dissertation project on this community. For this, I interviewed some incredible Mirandese-Portuguese bilinguals and carried out sociolinguistic research on the current and future vitality of the Mirandese language based on these interviews. I found it an absolute pleasure to be able to connect my passion for both linguistics and Portuguese throughout this project and I am looking forward to committing myself further to working on such projects in my future where I aim to continue with my Portuguese studies.
Hannah Shakespeare
I began studying Portuguese ab-initio at the University of Cambridge in 2015, and have since developed an avid interest in the languages and cultures of lusophone peoples across the globe. Over my four-year degree course I was privileged to study a wide range of topics relating to lusophone culture, from the work of African writers such as the Angolan Ondjaki and Mozambican José Craveirinha, to the films of the Brazilian Cinema Novo movement and José Saramago's novels.
Throughout my year abroad at the Universidade de Coimbra, I relished the opportunity to research the impact of Gilberto Freyre's lusotropicalismo on the Portuguese Estado Novo during the Portuguese Colonial War in Africa, and was lucky enough to view original propaganda films produced by the regime at the Arquivo Nacional da Imagem em Movimento in Lisbon.
Alongside lusophone cultural studies, I have consistently sought to improve my Portuguese linguistic skills, organising and attending several language exchanges in the UK, Portugal and now in Valencia, where I currently work as a British Council conversation assistant and part-time translator of academic articles for the Centro de Estudos Clássicos e Humanísticos at the Universidade de Coimbra.
I was utterly thrilled to receive the Ann Waterfall Student Award, and would like to convey my deepest thanks to the committee for their consideration, as well as to the inspirational Portuguese teaching staff at the University of Cambridge. I very much look forward to expanding my knowledge of lusophone languages and cultures in the future.
APS Journal
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