Biography

Short Bio

João Miguel Biscaia Valadas Branquinho was born in Figueira da Foz, a sunny Portuguese city on the Atlantic Ocean, on 30 September 1951. He lived in Maputo (then Lourenço Marques) in Mozambique, East Africa (then a Portuguese colony), from 1951 up until 1968. João arrived in Lisbon in 1968 to read for the first degree at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon. He eventually moved in 1970 to the opposite building, the Faculty of Letters, to read for the first degree in Philosophy. Having obtained this degree in 1976, João taught Philosophy at high school level at several places in Lisbon, among which the Liceu Pedro Nunes. Then he moved back to Mozambique, already an independent country, where he taught for some time at the University Eduardo Mondlane. Having been appointed in January 1981 Probationer Assistant Lecturer at the Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon, he returned to Lisbon, where he has been living since then.
João fathered four sons: Miguel and André, from his second marriage; Tiago and Patrícia, from his first marriage.
Present appointment: Full Professor of Philosophy at the Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa (Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon), 2006- . Previous appointments: Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa, 2001-6; Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa, 1993-2001. Assistant Lecturer in Philosophy at the Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa, 1985-1993. Probationer Assistant Lecturer in Philosophy at the Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa, 1981-1985.
Degrees awarded: Master of Arts, University of Lisbon, 1985; Doctor of Philosophy (D.Phil.),University of Oxford, 1991 (title of thesis: Direct Reference, Cognitive Significance and Fregean Sense; main advisor: Tim Williamson); Agregação (Higher Doctorate), University of Lisbon, 2002.
Head of the Philosophy Department, Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon (2010-2012); Director of Graduate Studies: M.A./Ph.D. Programme in the Philosophy of Language and Mind (Mestrado em Filosofia da Linguagem e da Consciência), University of Lisbon (1995-2000 and 2001-2002); and M.A/Ph.D Programme in Philosophy, area of specialization: Analytic Philosophy, University of Lisbon (2002-2006)
Member of the scientific committees of the Master and PhD Programmes in Cognitive Science of the University of Lisbon (2008-)
Coordinator of the LanCog (Language, Mind and Cognition) Research Group (1995-2015)
Editor and Co-Editor of Disputatio – International Journal of Analytic Philosophy (1996-2015)
Research Areas: Philosophy of Language, Metaphysics, Foundations of Cognitive Science, Formal Semantics.
João Branquinho has published, both in Portuguese and international philosophy journals, several articles on topics such as existence, rigid designation, indexical reference and thought, the semantics of attitude reports, cognitive dynamics, and the individuation of propositional content.
His prospective research includes projects on the dynamics of indexical belief, the nature of modes of presentation, the relations between rigid designation and content, and the concept of existence.
João is about to publish an introductory book on ontology and metaphysics titled Introdução à Metafísica Analítica. Uma Introdução Logicamente Disciplinada a Problemas Centrais de Metafísica (Introduction to Analytic Metaphysics. A Logically Disciplined Introduction to Central Problems in Metaphysics).
Co-editor of the open access volume Compêndio em Linha de Problemas de Filosofia Analítica
Editor of the collection of essays The Foundations of Cognitive Science, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001. The Introduction to the volume is available online here.
Co-editor, with Desidério Murcho, of the book Enciclopédia de Termos Lógico-Filosóficos (Encyclopedia of Philosophical Logic), Lisboa, Gradiva, 2001. New revised edition: João Branquinho, Desidério Murcho and Nelson Gonçalves Gomes (eds), Enciclopédia de Termos Lógico-Filosóficos, São Paulo, Martins Fontes, 2006.
Fellow of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation at the University of Oxford (1988-1991).
Invited Speaker at the 20th World Congress of Philosophy, Boston, MA, USA, August 1998
Invited Speaker at SIFA 04 - Sixth National Conference of the Italian Society of Analytic Philosophy: Analytic Philosophy and European Culture, University of Genoa, September 2004.
Organizer of the following international conferences (among others): Conference on The Foundations of Cognitive Science at the End of the Century (Lisbon, May 1998); 7th Annual Meeting of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology (Lisbon, September 1998); First Latin Meeting in Analytic Philosophy (Lisbon, July, 2001); Fifth European Congress for Analytic Philosophy, ECAP5 (Lisbon, August 2005), 1st Lisbon Workshop on Semantics (University of Lisbon, October 2006), Petrus Hispanus Lectures
President of the European Society for Analytical Philosophy (ESAP ), 2002-2005. Member of theSteering Committee of ESAP, 1999-2002 and 2005-2008.
President of the Portuguese Society for Analytic Philosophy(2003-2006)
Member of the Editorial Board of Dialectica , the Official Journal of ESAP (2002-)
Member of the Review Panel “Consciousness in a Natural and Cultural Context” (CNCC), The E uropean Science Foundation (ESF), EUROCORES Programme
Visiting Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Brasilia, Brazil (August 2000)
Visiting Academic, Sub-Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University (Michaelmas 2000)
Professor at the Summer School in Analytic Philosophy, New York University, Florence, Italy, 2003 and 2005.
Visiting Researcher of Level 1, National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), Brazil, Federal University of Ceará, 2009
Recent papers by João Branquinho include: "On the Persistence of Indexical Belief", Manuscrito 2009; "O Problema das Predicações Singulares de Inexistência", in G. Imaguire et al, Metafísica Contemporânea, Rio de Janeiro, Vozes, 2008; "In Defence of Obstinacy", Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 17 (2003).