2023 Dignity Workshop 06.2: Francisco Gomes de Matos 2023 HumanDHS Lifetime Commitment Award
Channel: Evelin Lindner
Date: 2023-11-26

Francisco Gomes de Matos is the recipient of the 2023 HumanDHS Lifetime Commitment Award at age 90! Congratulations!

Francisco Gomes de Matos is being honored with the 2023 HumanDHS Lifetime Commitment Award on the occasion of the 20th Annual Workshop on Transforming Humiliation and Violent Conflict titled “The Urgency of Seeding Dignity: Honoring 20 Years of Global Collaboration for Transforming Suffering Through Courageous and Compassionate Action,” held both online and in person on December 8, 2023. This workshop series is being co-hosted by the Morton Deutsch-International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution at Teachers College, Columbia University, since 2003.

This is Francisco Gomes de Matos' acceptance speech that he kindly recorded on November 26, 2023. Kindly see the award ceremony on December 8, 2023, on https://youtu.be/a4H8MobcsXI.

These are his words, transcribed by Linda Hartling: 
"AGRADECIMENTO: A digniappreciation to HDHS
What a privilege to receive your Award! May I humbly say I am proud to have been committed
to Dignity studies firstly through online and then briefly face to face with Evelin Lindner during her lecturing visit to Recife -- UFPE and ABA. For the publication of my Dignity book by Dignity Press in 2013 I am deeply grateful. I have a list of things to be thankful for, but instead, may I close by saying you helped me become a dignilinguist now.
Cofounder of ABA Global Education Recife 
Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at Universidade Federal de Pernambuco"

Professor Francisco Gomes de Matos is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UPFE) in Recife, northeastern Brazil, and President of the Board of Associação Brasil America. Dr. Francisco Cardoso Gomes holds degrees in languages and law from UFPE and in linguistics from the University of Michigan and the Catholic University of São Paulo. He has taught linguistics and languages at the UFPE until his retirement in 2003, teaching Linguistic Rights at that university's Specialization Course in Human Rights and Applied Linguistics. 
Professor Gomes de Matos has presented more than 80 papers in national, regional, international conferences in Brazil, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. A world pioneer in Peace Linguistics since 1993, he has published four books thereon, two of which in Portuguese and two in English. He was a Visiting Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Anthropology Museum (Mexico City), the University of Ottawa, the Catholic University of São Paulo, and a Fulbright Visiting Professor of Portuguese at the University of Georgia, Athens, USA. He was visiting coordinator of CENFI-Centro de Informação Intercultural — in Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro. 
Gomes de Matos is also internationally known for his work in Linguistic Rights. Gomes de Matos is the author of two pioneering pleas: For a Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights (1984) and for Communicative Peace (1993). As the author of the pioneering (1984) Plea for a Language Rights Declaration, he chaired the UNESCO-sponsored International Seminar in Human Rights and Cultural Rights at the Law School, Federal University of Pernambuco (1987), the outcome of which is the Declaration of Recife (on Linguistic Rights). 
Active in Human Rights, Dr. Gomes de Matos is a co-founder of the Dom Helder Camara Human Rights Commission, Federal University of Pernambuco. He is also co-founder of Associação Brasil America (ABA) Global Education, an organization established in Recife, Brazil, 25 years ago, and co-founder of the World Dignity University initiative. 
His book Dignity. A Multidimensional View was published by Dignity Press in 2013 (https://www.dignitypress.org/dignity-press-books/dignity-multidimensional). Another sustained commitment of his is centered on applications of the Nonkilling Approach, as can be seen in his book Nurturing Nonkilling. His book Nurturing Nonkilling: A Poetic Plantation was published June 2009 by the Center for Global Nonkilling, Honolulu. 
He likes to characterize his current mission as that of helping contribute to the global education of DIGNIFIERS.

See more on: 
- www.humiliationstudies.org/whoweare/board02.php#matos
- www.humiliationstudies.org/whoweare/annualmeeting/39.php
- www.worlddignityuniversity.org