Michele Portatadino

Michele Portatadino has a MA in African Studies at Leiden University, the Netherlands (2016). He previously obtained a BA in Political Science and International Relations at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan, Italy (2013). He worked from 2014 to 2016 at the African Studies Centre, Leiden as LDI Student Assistant. In 2014, he made about one hundred photographs (glass positives) available online, from the research archives of Anthropologist Professor Sjoerd Hofstra. These photographs were made in Sierra Leone in 1935/36. Thanks to Mr. Portatadino they are now presented in Wikimedia Commons, available for all, and the photographs are used in Wikipedia and in other websites and publications. In 2015-2016, he was entitled with the making of an inventory of audiovisual material from the collection of Professor Roel Coutinho collection on Guinea-Bissau and Senegal (1973 - 1974) and an Encoded Archival Description (EAD) of mentioned audiovisual material. Thus, a description of Prof. Roel Coutinho' s collection is now available. Mr. Portatadino was responsible for a English-Portuguese translation of descriptions of this audiovisual material. With the personal cooperation of Prof. Roel Coutinho, the original description of the collection drawn up in Dutch was firstly translated into English. Successively, Mr. Portatadino redacted the Portuguese version. Fundamental to such task were Mr. Portatadino linguistic skills with an almost native speaker proficiency in both English and Portuguese. He demonstrated an outstanding attitude to translation work from and to two languages different from his mother tongue, thereafter, the EAD is now available in English and Portuguese. The digitalized version of 289 reverse slides and 451 photographs originally taken by Prof. Roel Coutinho in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau (dated 1973 - 1974), are now present in Wikimedia Commons, publicly available on Wikipedia and other websites for publications, with a thorough description in English and Portuguese.