The Captain’s Coup: Activist Journalism on the Portuguese Revolution

Part Three of the 2025 Portuguese Lusophone-World Lecture Series

Illustrated Presentation for The Captains’ Coup Book Event: 2025

Professors Daniela Melo and Timothy Walker will present highlights from their new scholarly edition of Wilfred Burchett’s writing on Portugal’s 1974 “Carnation” Revolution—published in English for the first time by Verso Books (UK). Drawing on Burchett’s original English-language manuscripts discovered in the National Library of Australia, their illustrated talk explores the role of activist journalism in documenting the downfall of Europe’s longest-standing dictatorship and the grassroots mobilization that made it possible.

About Wilfred Burchett (1911–1983)

Wilfred Burchett was a prolific and controversial Australian foreign correspondent described by some as “one of the most important journalists of the twentieth century.” He gained international prominence for his groundbreaking reporting on the “atomic plague” in Hiroshima following the 1945 U.S. bombing. Burchett’s work on the Portuguese Carnation Revolution includes rare, in-depth interviews with military leaders, political figures, and everyday people—farmers, fishermen, factory workers, and rural women—offering a vivid and inclusive account of the revolution’s impact. His reporting foregrounds popular mobilization over elite narratives, illuminating the emotional and narrative dimensions of political transformation.

Presenter Biographies

Daniela F. Melo is a political scientist and lecturer in social sciences at Boston University (College of General Studies). Her work is published in such academic journals as Comparative European Politics, Social Movement Studies, and Foreign Policy Analysis. She is co-editor, with Paul Manuel, of After the Carnation Revolution: Social Movements in Portugal Since 25 April 1974 (Liverpool University Press, 2025). Melo held a Fulbright fellowship in Portugal, has served as a consultant to the US State Department regarding domestic politics in Portugal and Spain, and is a frequent contributor of political analysis to various Portuguese media outlets, commenting on US politics and foreign policy.

Timothy D. Walker is professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where he serves on the executive board of the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture, and is graduate faculty of the Department of Portuguese. Walker is also an affiliated researcher of the Centro de História d’Aquém e d’Além-Mar (CHAM), Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal. From 1994 to 2003, he was a visiting professor at the Universidade Aberta (Open University) in Lisbon. He is the recipient of a Fulbright dissertation fellowship to Portugal, and fellowships from the Portuguese Camões Institute, the Luso-American Development Foundation, and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.