Paul Manuel’s scholarship has followed Portugal since the Carnation Revolution of April 25, 1974. The work began in 1990–1991, when, as a Fulbright scholar at the Universidade de Coimbra, he travelled regularly to Lisbon to interview the military officers who had planned and carried out the coup — conversations that, three decades later, became the foundation of his books on the revolution and its afterlife.
Research in Portugal, 1990–1991
Manuel spent the academic year in Coimbra, where his dissertation research for Georgetown took shape, and travelled to Lisbon for the interviews, staying in the apartment of his friend Joaquim Costa during his visits to the capital. Photographs of the officers he interviewed, taken between December 1990 and April 1991, are on The Captains of April page.
The Books
The interviews were published in English as Voices of the Revolution (2019) and in Portuguese as Vozes da Revolução (Tinta da China, 2024), which Portugal’s Commission for the 50th Anniversary of April 25 designated historically significant. After the Carnation Revolution (Liverpool University Press, 2025) followed. The full list is on the Books page.
Lisbon: Book Launches and the Press
The Portuguese edition brought a launch at the University of Lisbon in May 2024 and a run of interviews with Diário de Notícias, Rádio Renascença and SÁBADO, which are listed with links on the Media Appearances page.
The Embassy of Portugal, Washington, D.C., and Georgetown University
For the fiftieth anniversary of the revolution, Washington hosted a two-day program in November 2024: a panel on the democratic legacy of April 25 at the residence of Ambassador Francisco Duarte Lopes on November 14, and a session on the Captains of April at Georgetown’s Department of Government the following day. The embassy also hosted the launch of After the Carnation Revolution on September 17, 2025.
