PT Inês Bettencourt da Câmara
With a degree in Social Communication and a PhD in Communication Sciences from ISCSP-UL, Inês is particularly interested in the social and institutional functions of the museum, cultural management and communication and audience development. Inês belongs to the Executive Committee of the European NGO 'Culture Action Europe'.
She is also a member of ICOM (International Committee of Museum Professionals), SOPCOM (Portuguese Communications Society), APOM (Portuguese Museology Association) and ESA (European Sociological Association). She has been teaching in the areas of sociology, marketing and communication for around eighteen years.
Inês founded Mapa das Ideias in 1999 and has been its director ever since.
My object
My chosen object is both very recent and very old.
It's a pangolin carved from stone, given to me by a close friend. It was an unexpected gift for both of us. He reacted to my emotion.
This pangolin is the protagonist of my father's stories on weekend mornings, when I was very little and we would talk about getting ready in the morning in the bathroom full of steam and cigarette smoke. It's a strange and exotic animal, the hero of a brave story for the love of his friends and a goat. I have no idea what fanciful plot gave rise to the story the first time round, but my father was in charge of telling and retelling it over the years. This brave pangolin was always the starting point of our conversation.