Shifting Grounds
From “Stigmatised Territory” to Travel Trend
The shift from fear to fascination may look like progress, but history shows what happens when neighbourhoods become desirable before they are protected.
Shifting Grounds
Terrains in transit, truths in tension.
Shifting Grounds
Portugal Is Gutting Its Cultural Backbone — and Calling It Reform
By scrapping advisory boards, the government is centralizing power over art — and calling it modernization.
Shifting Grounds
The Train That Never Leaves: Vale’s Carajás Railway Is Crushing the Awá-Guajá
Brazil’s most profitable railway is also one of its quietest human rights scandals—where trains run on schedule and Indigenous lives are pushed permanently off track.
Shifting Grounds
Portugal Is Gutting Its Cultural Backbone — and Calling It Reform
Less voices, more control: how “reform” is turning culture into a managed asset.
Shifting Grounds
The House That Wouldn’t Die: Chico Mendes Returns to Belém for COP30
As the world gathers in the Amazon to talk about the planet’s future, the home of a murdered rubber tapper rises again to remind everyone what the fight was always about.
Shifting Grounds
Mulheres do Mar: The Women Who Inherit the Sea
A film from the Azores explores the quiet power of women who live in rhythm with the Atlantic.
Shifting Grounds
Portugal Is Eating Itself Alive — And Calling It Tourism
Inside the polemic shaking the postcard paradise.
Shifting Grounds
No Borders on the Waves: Surf Farm Caparica Makes the Ocean a Space of Belonging
Once a pastime of the privileged, surfing is being reimagined as a tool of liberation for migrants and refugees.
Shifting Grounds
Quiet Luxury x Coastal Lockout: The Velvet Rope Beaches of the Alentejo
How Portugal’s public beaches became a playground for billionaires, one villa at a time.
Shifting Grounds
From Pink Street to Beato: Musicbox Dies So Casa Capitão Can Live
After 18 years, Lisbon's legendary underground sanctuary closes forever. Six days later, the revolution rises from its ashes.
Shifting Grounds
Islands, Wetlands, and Memory: Lusophone Africa’s New World Heritage
UNESCO’s latest World Heritage sites in Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau challenge colonial conservation models—and place community-led ecology at the center.
Shifting Grounds
The Curve and the Edge: Architecture as Promise and Protest
What Brazilian architecture reveals about class, ideology, and the battle for public space.