ARSÉNIO CHAVES PUIM was born in 1936 in the Azores, on the island of Santa Maria, in the area of Calheta, in Santo Espírito. He completed his primary education in his home parish of Santo Espírito and went on to study Theology at the Seminary of Angra do Heroísmo, serving as a priest until 1976. That same year, he earned a diploma in nursing from the School of Nursing in Ponta Delgada and worked as a nursing professional until 1995. On Santa Maria, he also served as a Portuguese and History teacher at the Externato and held several public offices, including City Councillor (Vereador) and Mayor of the Vila do Porto Municipal Council (Presidente da Câmara Municipal). He was a co-founder of the Santa Maria Ethnographic Museum and of the newspapers “Pico Alto” and “O Baluarte de Santa Maria”, of which he was the first director. Since 1982, Puim has lived in Vila Franca do Campo, on the island of São Miguel, where he has actively participated in civic life. His contributions include service on various municipal bodies, membership in the Santa Casa da Misericórdia, and his role as chief editor of the newspaper “A Crença” from 2000 to 2018. Since 2001, he has published five books on Azorean history and ethnography, with particular emphasis on Santa Maria. Arsénio Chaves Puim was also an important activist against the dictatorship in Portugal prior to 1974, the Estado Novo, and against the Colonial War, having been a member of the Movement for Democracy (MDP). In 2009, he was awarded the Medal of Honorary Citizen and Municipal Merit by the Vila Franca do Campo City Council.

GIUSEPPE FORMATO, PhD, has served as a Senior Lecturer at Lesley University and is currently an associated researcher at ISCTE–Lisbon University Institute in the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology, where he previously held appointments as a postdoctoral fellow and visiting researcher. He has been awarded a grant from the Camões Institute through the Fernão Mendes Pinto Program. In 2025, he joined the research project Exporting Portugal: Estado Novo Cultural Diplomacy and Rebranding Strategies in the United States (1933–1974) and has served on scientific committees for international conferences, such as Santa Maria’s LPAZ Forum, contributing to scholarly dialogue in his field. His scholarly work focuses on sociolinguistic ethnography, language ideology, and diasporic cultures, with particular attention to Azorean communities in New England, informed in part by his family ties to the Island of Santa Maria. He has published in newspapers, academic journals, and edited volumes, and has been an invited speaker at schools, universities, and conferences in Europe and North America. He has also received grants to conduct archival research at the Public Library and Regional Archive of Ponta Delgada and the National Library of Portugal by the Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD). His poetry has appeared in “Gávea-Brown: A Bilingual Journal of Portuguese–North American Letters and Studies” at Brown University. In 2024, he received the Joseph Moore Award for Dedication to the Profession at Lesley University, and in 2025 he was named K–12 Teacher of the Year by the American Organization of Teachers of Portuguese. He is also currently a high school Italian and Portuguese teacher living in New England.

ISBN: 9789897356926

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