The 5th edition of the LPAZ Forum will occur between September 5 and 7, 2024, on the island of Santa Maria – Azores, as a leading meeting of researchers and experts on “The Azores, the Atlantic, and Global Challenges.” The works presented in the 2023 edition will be published by Bruma Publications from California State University, Fresno, with an expected release date of September 2024.

Promoted by the LPAZ Association, in collaboration with academic partners and the support of various government institutions and the business sector, this conference brought together, between the 7th and the 9th of September, more than two dozen experts from the four corners of the Atlantic, selected through a Call for Papers allowing a round table discussion, five thematic panels and a Strategic Roadmap through the island of Santa Maria.

On the 7th, the LPAZ Forum opened with a round table on the theme “NATO-EU Relations: A New Atlantic Century?”, with Alana Moceri, from IE University (Madrid), Ana Isabel Xavier from CEI-Iscte, and Licínia Simão from the University of Coimbra, moderated by Luís Nuno Rodrigues, full professor at ISCTE, debating the current relationship between these two institutions in the face of the war in Ukraine.

The 8th was reserved for an academic colloquium divided into five panels on the themes of “Island Narratives,” “Atlantic Diasporas,” “The Azores in Atlantic Politics,” “Atlantic Geopolitics,” and “Atlantic Security and Technology”. Several papers were presented on a wide range of topics, from the study of climate change based on maritime navigation logbooks from the period 1750-1950, by Timothy Walker (University of Massachusetts – Dartmouth) to the activism of the Azorean diaspora in the United States during the April 25 Revolution in Portugal, by Daniela Melo (Boston University), the European Union’s strategies for the outermost regions and the specific case of the Azores, by Nuno Lopes (IPRI-NOVA, CEHu-Univ. Açores and OP-ISCSP ULisboa), an analysis of Portugal’s maritime power, by Sandra Balão (CIDIUM-IUM and CAPP-ISCSP ULisboa), or even the implementation of high technology in the Azores, by Paulo Quental (EMA Espaço).

One of the developments in this edition is the publication of the papers presented at the academic colloquium through BRUMA Publications from PBBI at California State University, Fresno. This publishing project has been working with the editor Letras Lavadas, based in the Azores. With this publication, we will bring together the community from the Pacific to Europe, with the Azores at the center, to reflect on contemporary issues of interest to the entire Atlantic basin. This proposal was put forward by Diniz Borges, who took part in the “Atlantic Diasporas” panel and saw the conference as an opportunity to launch “a new dialogue between the Diaspora and the Azores.”

With this fourth edition, the LPAZ Forum has established itself as a bottom-up initiative in which the community takes the initiative to mobilize academia, industry, and government institutions in the debate to gain knowledge and awareness of the significant dynamics affecting the whole and every part of the Atlantic.

The LPAZ Forum has been organized since 2015, initially on a biannual basis and since 2022 on an annual basis. In the 2023 edition, the partners were the Center for International Studies of Iscte-IUL (CEI-Iscte), the Center for Humanistic Studies of the University of the Azores (CEHu), the Center of the Atlantic, and the Transatlantic Studies Association. The Regional Government of the Azores, the Municipality of Vila do Porto, and the Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD) supported this initiative.

All the public sessions of the “LPAZ Forum – The Azores, the Atlantic, and Global Challenges,” as well as the media coverage, are available at https://forumlpaz.wixsite.com/2023/info.

The LPAZ 2023 Forum ended on the 9th with the Santa Maria Strategic Roadmap, which took the registered participants on a tour of the island’s main geostrategic infrastructures, past and present, namely the RAEGE Station, Pico Alto, the Property of Public Interest “Lugar do Aeroporto,” and the Santa Maria Ocean Control Center. This Roadmap also covered infrastructures that have since been decommissioned, such as the Underwater Acoustics Polygon, the LORAN Station or the Santa Maria Free Zone, as well as those that are still in the pipeline, such as PT Space’s Aerospace Technology Center or the Space Port, through the ongoing extension of the Santa Maria Teleport. This Roadmap was thus an opportunity for specialists in the various sectoral areas of Atlantic geopolitics to understand in loco the dynamics of the Azores’ role in supporting transport technologies, communications, knowledge, and the Atlantic domain over time in a stimulating exchange of experiences and perspectives.

The Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) from Fresno State was present with a presentation on Diaspora Studies and proposed the creation of an Azorean Diaspora forum.