Series of two lectures with Rafael Faraco Benthien on his research programme entitled ‘Crossed histories of the social sciences’.

 

Sobre a história cruzada das ciências sociais e a coleção Biblioteca Durkheimiana

 

Este ciclo de conferências apresenta desdobramentos do programa de investigação desenvolvido por Rafael Faraco Benthien (doutorado pela USP, professor na Universidade do Paraná e investigador convidado do IHC – NOVA FCSH), intitulado “por história cruzada das ciências sociais”. Na primeira conferência explicam-se os fundamentos deste programa, e refere-se ainda a experiência editorial da coleção Biblioteca Durkheimiana; na segunda, aborda-se um projecto novo, voltado para o cruzamento entre L’Année Sociologique e La Nouvelle Revue Française, explorando as interações entre ciência e literatura.

 

ENTRADA LIVRE

 

1ª Conferência — 20 de Outubro — 10-12h

A “Biblioteca Durkheimiana” e seu lugar em uma História Cruzada das Ciências Sociais

Esta conferência visa apresentar os contornos gerais do programa de investigação “história cruzada das ciências sociais”, o qual foi tomando corpo desde 2011, e adquiriu uma feição pública mais robusta em 2020, por ocasião de um artigo publicado na Revista de História, da Universidade de São Paulo.

Tal esforço procura demarcar-se das histórias disciplinares tradicionais das ciências sociais, pautadas ora no labor rotineiro dos historiadores oficiais, ora na disputa entre diferentes “profetas” pela imposição de seus novos programas. Distingue-se ainda dos modelos pretensamente omnibus, concebidos para dar conta das particularidades de todos os saberes (como o paradigma kuhniano, o campo bourdieusiano ou a rede latouriana). Em ambos os casos, parte-se de, e reforçam-se, certas concepções acerca da unidade e da totalidade de uma ciência. Este é o clássico eixo articulador do passado, do presente e do futuro disciplinares. A proposta aqui em apreço consiste em avançar uma história excêntrica dos saberes, centrada nos circuitos de ideias e de pessoas entre dois ou mais domínios. Procura-se partir das tensões semânticas em torno dos rótulos disciplinares, particularmente visíveis quando se questiona a (im)possibilidade da interdisciplinaridade. Em termos lógicos, três tipos se apresentam: pode alguém, por exemplo, sustentar a sobreposição entre disciplinas, sugerindo que os seus rótulos encobrem uma natureza partilhada, em planos epistemológicos, metodológicos ou quanto a objetos privilegiados de investigação; outra possibilidade, certamente a mais usual, consiste no isolamento de zonas de colaboração, o que supõe uma explicitação, seguida de uma justificação, de pontos comuns e de diferenças. Finalmente, é ainda possível indicar a total incompatibilidade entre dois saberes, implicando também um esforço definicional imprescindível.

Ao longo das histórias disciplinares, quando cruzadas, estas três modalidades de postura costumam verificar-se em simultâneo, cada qual mobilizando cadeias distintas de conceitos, pessoas e instituições. Espera-se que, ao testar interdisciplinaridades episódicas, seja possível reabrir o passado das disciplinas colocadas em relação, revelando circuitos outrora ativos que possam ter ficado de fora da memória hoje sacralizada. Ao fazê-lo, espera-se ainda compreender melhor as dinâmicas desses saberes, contribuindo assim igualmente para a abertura de seus futuros.

De modo a exemplificar os produtos dessa proposta, a conferência encerra com uma apresentação sucinta da experiência editorial da colecção Biblioteca Durkheimiana (10 vol.), publicada na editora da USP, entre 2016 e 2025.

 

 

2ª Conferência — 24 de Outubro — 10-12h

Relações entre a Nouvelle Revue Française e L’Année Sociologique: quando a arte dança sobre o chão laborado da ciência, e vice-versa

Nesta conferência discute-se uma investigação recentemente iniciada, que constitui um desdobramento das temáticas anteriormente abordadas neste ciclo de conferências. Nela, procura-se identificar circuitos de ideias e de pessoas que reúnem vanguardas científicas e literárias ativas na França da Terceira República (1870-1940), bem como compreender as dinâmicas das suas interações, tanto positivas como negativas.

Nas investigações anteriores, Rafael Faraco Benthien manteve-se sobretudo ligado aos circuitos entre saberes propriamente académicos, promovendo pequenas variações no ângulo da análise, mas permanecendo basicamente dentro do sistema de ensino e de investigação francês.

Agora, trata-se de testar os resultados já obtidos a partir de um cruzamento com outra esfera, implicando outros grupos sociais e outras bases institucionais. Para esse efeito, o autor propõe-se analisar o cruzamento do grupo constituído em torno da revista L’Année Sociologique, baluarte de um projeto coletivo e universitário de ciência social, com aquele organizado em torno de La Nouvelle Revue Française, empenhado na renovação da literatura, do teatro e da crítica literária. Diversos indícios de arquivo recolhidos em investigações anteriores mostram que alguns indivíduos ligados a essas iniciativas se frequentavam e se estimavam intelectualmente. Para verificar até que ponto essas relações tiveram impacto sobre os trabalhos dessas pessoas, o projecto parte da análise morfológica e de conteúdo dessas revistas, visando, em seguida, à complexificação da série documental primária, mediante a sua articulação tanto com livros (romances, obras científicas, volumes impressos de correspondência) como com material inédito proveniente de fundos de arquivo. O seu propósito geral é alargar o âmbito de uma história intelectual orientada para o cruzamento de disciplinas, discutindo, de forma experimental, as influências recíprocas de áreas geralmente consideradas pela historiografia como muito afastadas entre si, quando não mesmo opostas (ciência e literatura).

 

Seminar on history and political theory, with José Neves and Giulia Strippoli, organised in association with the screening of Anna Negri’s film ‘Toni, My Father‘ at the DocLisboa festival.

 

Antonio Negri: do longo ‘68 italiano ao comunismo do século XXI

 

Antonio Negri (1933-2024) foi uma figura política destacada da história do longo 1968 italiano, bem como um pensador que adquiriu grande relevância internacional no século XXI. A sua vida e ideias foram sempre matéria de grande controvérsia. Neste seminário, procura-se, numa primeira parte, dar a conhecer o chamado longo 68 italiano, contextualizando a emergência de Negri à luz das transformações sociais, económicas e políticas dos anos 60 e 70. Na segunda parte, o seminário analisa o desenvolvimento do pensamento de Negri a partir dos anos 80, no rescaldo da experiência militante do período anterior e ao encontro da sua forma particular de combinar a tradição marxista com autores como Michel Foucault, aproximando noções como general intellect e biopolítica.

 

Primeira parte, com Giulia Strippoli

Para a Itália, usa-se a definição de longo 1968 ou época dos movimentos em referência a um período que vai do início dos anos sessenta até ao fim da década de setenta. Protagonistas e historiadores interpretaram o movimento operário e estudantil com ênfase na longa duração tanto dos eventos quanto do “espírito”, uma perspetiva que também foi usada em interpretações historiográficas em perspetiva “global”, como no caso de The Spirit of ’68 de G. Rainer Horn. A primeira parte deste seminário concentra-se na cronologia, nos protagonistas, nas ideias políticas e na memória da época deste longo período, desde o fim do boom económico até ao fim de década de 1970.

Segunda parte, com José Neves

Em 2000, a publicação de Empire, que Negri escreveu com Michael Hardt, ofereceu a diferentes movimentos sociais e às esquerdas um quadro de análise e conceptualização alternativo às narrativas liberais que por então viam na queda do Muro de Berlim o fim da própria história. Contribuindo de forma seminal para reconciliar tradições frequentemente desavindas, como o marxismo e o pós-estruturalismo, o sucesso de Empire acompanhou de perto a emergência dos movimentos por uma outra globalização e inspirou também colectivos e iniciativas em torno de temas como a precariedade, as migrações ou a propriedade intelectual. Na segunda parte deste seminário, mapearemos as principais e ideias do pensamento de Negri.

 

Inscrição obrigatória através do email giuliastrippoli@fcsh.unl.pt

 

 

Fotografia: Antonio Negri, por Christian Werner e Weltz (Fonte: Wikimedia Commons)

 

Round table discussion organised by the GRASSROOTS project, which seeks to recover memories of revolutionary daily life, the routines of militancy and the details of political learning during those years.

 

Memórias Militantes da Revolução

 

Memórias Militantes da Revolução inicia um ciclo de mesas-redondas organizado pelo projeto de história oral “Memória e Revolução” do Instituto de História Contemporânea, em colaboração com o Museu do Aljube.

O objectivo do projeto é a recolha de experiências de militância no processo revolucionário. Tomando estas experiências como ponto de partida, a mesa-redonda procurará recuperar memórias do quotidiano revolucionário, as rotinas da militância e os pormenores da aprendizagem política daquelas anos, dimensões decisivas para compreender a revolução, mas que ficam normalmente esquecidas de uma história política, muito dependente de datas e protagonistas. O protagonismo, aqui, será dado às e aos militantes que fizeram da revolução um vasto campo de experiência política através de formas coletivas de militância.

 

ENTRADA LIVRE

 

 

 

A series of debates organised as part of the TRANSMAT project, the aim of which is to critically reflect on the colonial legacy in Portuguese museums.

 

Confrontar o Legado Colonial no Museu

 

Entre Junho e Outubro de 2025, o Museu Municipal Santos Rocha, na Figueira da Foz, será palco do ciclo de conversas Confrontar o Legado Colonial no Museu, uma iniciativa promovida pelo projecto TRANSMAT em parceria com o Museu Municipal Santos Rocha que reúne vozes diversas para reflectir criticamente sobre o legado colonial nos museus portugueses.

Ao longo de seis sessões, investigadores/as, artistas, curadores/as, escritores/as, docentes e outras personalidades convidam o público a participar num debate plural e aberto sobre memória, património e identidade. As sessões vão contar com a participação activa de personalidades locais, como Pedro Mota Curto (Diretor do Agrupamento de Escolas Figueira Mar) e Andrea Gaspar (Antropóloga e docente do Agrupamento de escolas zona urbana da Figueira da Foz), reforçando o envolvimento da comunidade da Figueira da Foz neste debate fundamental. Artistas como Francisco Vidal e Nuno Silas trazem o olhar das artes visuais para o centro da discussão, enriquecendo a troca de experiências e saberes. Contamos igualmente com a participação de Aristóteles Kandimba, escritor, investigador, produtor e fundador do Colectivo Tributo aos Ancestrais PT, cujo contributo tem sido fundamental no resgate e valorização das memórias e culturas afro-descendentes em Portugal.

Participe e faça parte desta reflexão colectiva sobre património, memória e transformação social na Figueira da Foz.

 

>> Descarregar o programa actualizado (PDF) <<

 

Sexta sessão: 

Aida Gomes (escritora e investigadora)
António Candeias (HERCULES — Universidade de Évora / IN2PAST)
Nélia Dias (CRIA ISCTE / IN2PAST)
Nuno Silas (IHC — Universidade de Évora / IN2PAST)
Pedro Aires Oliveira (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Sónia Vespeira de Almeida (CRIA — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)

 

 

Launch of the third book in the Estratégica collection by Imprensa de História Contemporânea [IHC Press], on censorship, coordinated by Rita Luís and Adalberto Fernandes. Presentation by Carla Baptista and José Bragança de Miranda at Livraria Tigre de Papel bookstore in Lisbon.

 

Censura: o que nos falta perguntar?

 

Censura: o que nos falta perguntar? Estabelece um diálogo para o desenvolvimento dos estudos sobre censura. Abordando temas em que a distinção entre a censura e outras formas de regulação é problematizada, questiona-se a função do discurso sobre a pornografia na construção do Estado-nação italiano, a chamada “cultura de cancelamento”, ou a função da moderação em ambiente digital em contextos democráticos marcados por discursos de ódio. Discutem-se ainda estudos que analisam processos censórios que extravasam a noção estrita de censura associada ao poder dos estados nacionais, analisando o papel da diplomacia na censura transnacional do cinema ou as contradições de uma “censura oficiosa” do jazz durante o regime franquista. O livro inclui entrevistas a Nicole Moore e Robert Darnton, cujos trabalhos recentes contribuem para criticar uma abordagem à censura enquanto força puramente negativa.

Este livro é resultado do projeto exploratório “CEMA – Censura(s): um modelo analítico de processos censórios no campo dos estudos sobre censura em Portugal”, desenvolvido no Instituto de História Contemporânea e financiado pela Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, sob coordenação de Rita Luís e com participação de Adalberto Fernandes, coordenadores da presente obra.

 

Sobre os coordenadores:
Rita Luís é investigadora no Instituto de História Contemporânea da Universidade Nova de Lisboa e no Laboratório associado IN2PAST. No IHC, coordena o grupo de investigação Cultura – Poder, Mediações e Arte e desenvolve um projeto sobre Entangled Iberian Censorship (CEECIND/02813/2017), com o qual obteve a Fellowship François Chevallier, na Casa Velázquez em Madrid em 2022. Foi investigadora responsável pelo projeto coletivo Censura(s): um modelo analítico de processos censórios (EXPL/COM-OUT/0831/2021), financiado pela FCT. Publica sobre história dos mass media no contexto das ditaduras ibéricas do século XX, focando-se na relação entre jornalismo e política, mas também nos fenómenos censórios, nos fluxos transnacionais e de transferência cultural, característicos da cultura audiovisual.

Adalberto Fernandes é doutorado em Filosofia pela Universidade de Lisboa com uma tese sobre Michel Foucault, mestre em comunicação e mestre em bioética. Colaborador do Instituto de História Contemporânea, foi investigador no Centro de Filosofia das Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa. Publicou 13 artigos e capítulos e fez 19 apresentações nos temas de comunicação política, filosofia política, biopolítica, soft power, processos participativos, media, jornalismo, ética da comunicação, comunicação de ciência, comunicação de saúde e bioética.

 

Obter o livro

 

Launch of the catalogue for the exhibition ‘Imaginários da Guiné-Bissau – o espólio de Álvaro de Barros Geraldo (1955–1975)’ [Imaginaries of Guinea-Bissau – the estate of Álvaro de Barros Geraldo (1955–1975)], edited by Inês Vieira Gomes and Catarina Laranjeiro. Presentation by Amadú Dafé.

 

Imaginários da Guiné-Bissau

O espólio de Álvaro de Barros Geraldo (1955–1975)

 

No ano em que se assinalam os 50 anos das independências das antigas colónias portuguesas em África, é lançada a publicação Imaginários da Guiné-Bissau, uma obra que propõe uma leitura crítica de um espólio fotográfico inédito, produzido na Guiné-Bissau entre 1955 e 1975. O fotógrafo português Álvaro de Barros Geraldo (1922–1993), radicado na Guiné-Bissau desde meados dos anos 1950, registou de perto as tensões, transformações e ambiguidades de um período marcado pela guerra colonial e pelas lutas de libertação. Este livro, tal como a exposição homónima, constitui um contributo fundamental para a reflexão sobre os legados do colonialismo português, a construção de identidades nacionais e a persistência de estruturas coloniais no presente.

Com textos de Catarina Mateus, Pedro Aires Oliveira, Inês Vieira Gomes e Catarina Laranjeiro, e um encarte de Marta Pinto Machado, esta publicação reúne perspectivas históricas, visuais e críticas para a problematização dos legados do colonialismo português.

 

 

The ninth edition of the congress, which aims to emphasise the importance of local history in contemporary historiography. Deadline: 7 September 2025

 

IX Congresso de História Local:

Conceitos, Práticas e Desafios na Contemporaneidade

 

 

O IX Congresso de História Local aspira acompanhar e estimular a renovação historiográfica em curso; assim, dá continuidade aos propósitos e dinâmicas iniciados em 2017, proporcionando um espaço de divulgação, de partilha e de problematização para todos/as quantos se dedicam a este ramo da historiografia, em diálogo permanente com a historiografia nacional e internacional. Tal como nas edições anteriores, o encontro pretende continuar a ser um contexto privilegiado para a reflexão sobre o conceito, as metodologias e as práticas da história local; por extensão, constitui-se como uma oportunidade para troca de experiências.

Do mesmo modo, os princípios subjacentes à organização do congresso fomentam a intervenção de estudantes de último ano de licenciatura e de primeiro de mestrado, com o intuito de obterem as primeiras experiências no meio académico.

 

 

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Chamada para comunicações

 

Convidam-se os interessados/as a apresentarem propostas de comunicação no domínio da história local, subordinadas à evolução analítica de comunidades e enquadradas pelas especificidades metodológicas e epistemológicas que caracterizam este campo de estudos. As propostas de comunicação sobre a história local na contemporaneidade podem ser concebidas em torno dos seguintes eixos temáticos, sem exclusão de outros tópicos:

• Transformações sociais e culturais;
• Imprensa local;
• Dinâmicas laborais e conflituosidade social;
• Reflexões sobre a teoria e metodologias da história local;
• A importância da história local no ensino secundário e superior;
• Temas e trabalhos subordinados à história de uma região;
• História e comunidade(s);
• Elite(s) e personalidades;
• Municípios e Poder Local;
• Instituições e associações locais;
• Organização, resistência e violência política na história local;
• A história das mulheres em contexto local;
• Territórios e património biocultural.

 

O encontro de 2025 será acolhido pela Câmara Municipal de Alpiarça. Seguindo o modelo dos eventos anteriores, esta edição contará com um painel exclusivamente dedicado à história deste município e do Ribatejo. Nesse sentido, convidam-se os historiadores/as, professores/as, investigadores/as e demais/as estudiosos da região a submeterem comunicações dedicadas à história de Alpiarça.

 

Envio de propostas

As propostas não deverão exceder os 3500 caracteres e contemplar o título do trabalho e uma biografia resumida do autor/a (máximo 750 caracteres).

As comunicações aceites resultarão em apresentações de 15 minutos.

Línguas de trabalho: Português e Inglês (não haverá interpretação simultânea).

O painel júnior é exclusivo para alunos/as de último ano de licenciatura e primeiro ano de mestrado; neste caso, a apresentação das propostas de comunicação deverá observar o mesmo procedimento, mas serão avaliadas separadamente.

Todas as propostas deverão ser submetidas através do formulário disponível 🔗neste link.

 

Inscrições

A inscrição no congresso é individual e gratuita e deverá ser feita através do formulário disponível 🔗neste link até ao dia 6 de Novembro de 2025.

 

Calendarização

Submissão de propostas: 7 Setembro 2025
Notificação de aceitação de propostas: 15 Outubro 2025
Divulgação do programa: 20 Outubro 2025
Prazo para inscrições: 6 Novembro 2025
Congresso: 7 – 8 Novembro 2025

 

Contacto: congressohistorialocal@gmail.com

 

 

Comissão Organizadora

 

Catarina Pimentel Neto (CEF — NOVA FCSH)
Catarina Veiga dos Santos (CEF — NOVA FCSH)
Diogo Ferreira (CEF — NOVA FCSH)
Eunice Relvas (CEF — NOVA FCSH / GEO-CML)
Guilherme Sequeira (CEF — NOVA FCSH)
Inês José ( IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST / CEF — NOVA FCSH)
João Francisco Pereira (CEF — NOVA FCSH / CEHR-UCP)
João Pedro Santos (IHC – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Liliana Caldeira (CEF — NOVA FCSH / Câmara Municipal de Lagoa)
Maria Fernanda Rollo (CEF — NOVA FCSH)
Maria Miguel Fresco (CEF — NOVA FCSH)
Mariana Reis de Castro (IHC – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST / CEF — NOVA FCSH)
Pedro Serra (CEF — NOVA FCSH)

 

Comissão Científica

 

Ana Cardoso Matos (CIDEHUS — Universidade de Évora)
Ana Paula Pires (CEF — NOVA FCSH / Universidade Açores)
António José Queiroz (CEFi  —UCP / CEPESE)
Diogo Ferreira (CEF — NOVA FCSH)
Eunice Relvas (CEF — NOVA FCSH / GEO-CML)
João Miguel Henriques (CEF — NOVA FCSH / CMC)
Jorge Fernandes Alves (FLUP)
Luís Alberto Alves (CITCEM — FLUP)
Manuela Tavares Ribeiro (FLUC)
Maria Conceição Meireles (FLUP)
Maria Fátima Nunes (IHC — Universidade de Évora / IN2PAST)
Maria Fernanda Rollo (CEF — NOVA FCSH)
Margarida Sobral Neto (FLUC)
Nuno Pousinho (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Paulo Jorge Fernandes (IHC – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Paulo Miguel Rodrigues (CEF — NOVA FCSH / Universidade da Madeira)
Pedro Serra (CEF — NOVA FCSH)
Sérgio Rezendes (CEF — NOVA FCSH)
Teresa Nunes (CEF — NOVA FCSH / FLUL)

 

 

 

Lecture by Claudio Ribeiro on the MPO project and the use of FAIR principles and creation of a Fair Digital Object for the project dataset.

 

Compartilhamento de dados de pesquisa:

uso do Fair Digital Object (FDO) para noticias em periódicos do século XIX

Claudio Ribeiro (UniRio)

 

A gestão de dados de investigação possibilita uma melhor partilha dos resultados dos projectos. Esta foi a abordagem seguida pelo projecto MPO (Música em Periódicos Oitocentistas), que levou à discussão sobre o contexto dos princípios FAIR e à criação de um FDO para o dataset escolhido no projecto de investigação. Nesta palestra, será feita uma exposição sobre o projecto e traremos para debate: a motivação, os principais desafios, uma visão do método e os resultados, além das lições aprendidas.

 

Sobre o orador:
Claudio Ribeiro é graduado em Engenharia com extensão em Análise de Sistemas. Doutor e mestre em Ciência da Informação, além de MBA em Gestão do Conhecimento. Bolseiro de Produtividade do CNPq e Cientista do Nosso Estado/FAPERJ. Em 2021, realizou um estágio pós-doutoral no grupo SCS (Semantics and Cybersecurity Service) da Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science da University of Twente/ The Netherlands, explorando representações semânticas e princípios FAIR para GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums). Líder do grupo de investigação OpenAIDoc/CNPq, qua trata a Ciência Aberta, Administração e Disseminação de Informação, Documentos, Registos e Recursos de Informação, além de esforços para a organização de informação na WEB. É Professor Associado da UNIRIO – Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro – ministrando aulas na graduação em Biblioteconomia, Arquivologia, Museologia e Administração Pública, além de ser docente permanente do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Biblioteconomia. Tem experiência nas áreas de Ciência da Computação e Ciência da Informação, atuando desde 1986 tanto em trabalhos técnicos quanto em atividades como professor universitário.

 

🔗 GRATUITO mas com INSCRIÇÃO OBRIGATÓRIA

 

 

Imagens do cartaz

 

Workshop that aims to place the OAU initiatives in their context and help consolidate analyses of its solidarity as a critical subject of the end of colonialism and white minority regimes.

 

The Organization of African Unity and the Struggle against Colonialism and Racism in Africa

 

The study of international organizations is an emerging field that covers a topic of growing importance in academia. In recent decades, the contributions of such organizations as actors in international relations have received increasing attention (Iriye 2004). Theoretical and empirical analyses seek to provide insights into the work of intergovernmental organizations, nongovernmental organizations, or transnational networks. By expanding their geographical scope beyond national borders, scholars interested in international organizations have reflected the myriad ways in which they can be studied (Hurd 2012).

The Organization of African Unity (OAU), as a regional organization, has been the subject of ongoing research (Gassama 2015). However, a review of existing publications reveals that relatively few studies have addressed the OAU’s solidarity against colonialism and racism in Africa. Several reasons may explain this situation. Comparatively, the OAU has received less attention than other international organizations, notably the United Nations. Research has mainly focused on its establishment and achievements in conflict resolution, cooperation and development (Muchie et al. 2014; Naldi 1999). Difficulties in accessing primary sources may also have contributed to the diversion of interest from the OAU’s contribution to decolonization and the end of white minority regimes.

Writing on the subject has mostly been done at the time of the events and lacks historical perspective (Binaisa 1977; El-Khawas 1978). The accounts are limited in scope, discussing primarily the OAU’s support for the liberation movements of Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa (Klotz 1995; Thomas 1996). With regard to the Portuguese colonies, with the exception of the work of Walraven (1999), it is difficult to find an overarching narrative, and the available information is mostly found in publications that do not focus on the topic as a primary concern (Sousa 2011; Tíscar Santiago 2013).

Thus, a more critical approach is needed to question what the OAU did to support the struggle against colonialism and racism in Africa, as well as the complexities and nuances involved. With this situation in mind, we intend to explore the OAU’s solidarity with the struggle against colonialism and racism in Africa in a workshop in-person and online that will take place in Lisbon, at the Institute of Contemporary History of the NOVA University of Lisbon, on 13 and 14 November 2025.

The workshop aims to place the OAU initiatives in their context and help consolidate analyses of its solidarity as a critical subject of the end of colonialism and white minority regimes. In addition, the workshop will contribute to rethinking the gaps in historiography by examining the OAU solidarity as a transnational phenomenon that transcended national boundaries.

We welcome proposals for 20-minute presentations on these and other topics:

• The extent to which the OAU played a role in ending colonialism and racism on the African continent;
• How the Liberation Committee was instrumental in the strategy of the OAU to undermine colonial rule and racist minority rule;
• How the attitudes of a number of states, due to inter-African competition, shaped the OAU’s policies on colonialism and racism;
• How the diplomacy of the OAU sought to shape the debate at the UN on colonialism and racism;
• How the OAU engaged with non-African countries as part of its support to the struggle for independence and against apartheid;
• How the organization worked as an intermediary in the support given by third parties to anti-colonial and anti-racist organizations;
• The importance of the relationship with the OAU for anti-colonial and anti-racist organizations to advance their agenda;
• The tensions and disagreements between the OAU and the anti-colonial and anti-racist organizations;
• The extent to which the anti-colonial and anti-racist organizations sought to use the OAU not only against the colonial and racist powers, but also to sideline competing groups.

 

Abstracts for presentations (200 words) and a biographical note (250 words) should be sent to: OAUconference@gmail.com

Deadline for submissions: 8 August 2025
Notification of acceptance: 15 August 2025

The organizers foresee the publication of the communications. The first draft of the papers is due on 30 January 2026.

 

>> Download the call for papers (PDF) >>

 

 

Organization:

Aurora Almada e Santos (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)

 

References:

BINAISA, Godfrey – «Organization of African Unity and Decolonization: Present and Future Trends» in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Vol. 432 (1977).
EI-KHAWAS, Mohamed A. – «The Quiet Role of OAU in Africa’s Liberation» in New Directions Vol. 5, Issue 2 (1978).
GASSAMA, Muhammad – From the OAU to the AU: The Odyssey of a Continental Organization. Paris: l’Harmattan, 2015.
HURD, Ian – Choices and Methods in the Study of International Organizations. Available at <URL:http://www.unstudies.org/sites/unstudies.org/files/hurd_jios.pdf>, on 18/03/2012.
IRIYE, Akira – Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.
KLOTZ, Audie – Norms in International Relations: The Struggle Against Apartheid. Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 1995.
MUCHIE, Mammo et al. (ed.) – Unite or Perish: Africa Fifty Years after the Founding of the OAU. Pretoria: Africa Institute of South Africa, 2014.
NALDI, Gino Joseph – The Organization of African Unity: An Analysis of its Role. London: Mansell, 1999.
SOUSA, Julião Soares – Amílcar Cabral (1924-1973). Vida e Morte de um Revolucionário Africano. Lisboa: Nova Vega, Lda, 2011.
THOMAS, Scott M. – The Diplomacy of Liberation: The Foreign Relations of the ANC Since 1960. London: Tauris Academic Studies, 1996.
TÍSCAR SANTIAGO, María José – Diplomacia Peninsular e Operações Secretas na Guerra Colonial. Lisboa: Edições Colibri, 2013.
WALRAVEN, Klaas van – Dreams of Power: The Role of the Organization of African Unity in the Politics of Africa. 1963-1993. Leiden: African Studies Centre, 1999.

 

 

Workshop that intends to investigate the relation between “global infrastructures” and “practices of rent-extraction”, both historically and in the global present. Deadline: 15 September 2025

 

Infrastructures of Rent Extraction

 

According to a number of prominent analyses, the contemporary world-market is characterised by “a full-fledged comeback and proliferation of forms of rent” (Vercellone 2010; see also: Harvey 2015, Mezzadra & Neilson 2017, Purcell 2018, Christophers 2020, Standing 2020). This political and economic shift demands granular reflections, and it has stimulated widespread theoretical and political debates.

Building upon classical Marxist critiques of imperialism – which emphasized the role of the imperialist “rentier state” as “a state of parasitic, decaying capitalism” (Lenin 1917) – a number of critics have suggested that the growing centrality of rent-extraction in global cycles of capital accumulation indicates a significant shift in the history of the capitalist mode of production from ‘neoliberalism’ to ‘rentier capitalism’ (Christophers 2020, Sadowski 2020, Birch & Ward 2023; Borg & Policante 2024). The neoliberal market presents itself as an arena of free trade, competition, entrepreneurship, and frictionless mobility. Yet, as these authors emphasize, control over key assets – such as land, intellectual property, natural resources, logistical and digital infrastructure – is increasingly dominated by a restricted number of companies and individuals: rentiers, passively piling up the returns accruing from their ownership of essential conditions of (re)production: land, water, housing, utilities, infrastructures and platforms.

Others (more problematically, from our perspective) have gone as far as suggesting that the growth of rent relations can be interpreted as a shift from capitalism to techno-feudalism (Varoufakis 2023, Durand 2024, Mazzuccato 2019, Dean 2025). This narrative stresses that contemporary digital economies are no longer driven primarily by labor exploitation, but by monopolistic control over digital infrastructures and rent extraction. According to this approach, today’s tech giants resemble lords presiding over private infrastructural fiefdoms, continuously extracting value from us captured users. This dynamic is intricately linked to ‘platformisation’, whereby Big Tech firms charge ‘rent’ for providing access to monopolised digital platforms (Sadowski, 2020; Mezzadra et al. 2024).

By controlling different layers of the digital stack, Big Tech companies appear to be increasingly able to extract value from global production chains. GAFAM – and more precisely the Big Three of the Cloud (AWS, Google Cloud Provider and Microsoft Azure) – currently control two thirds of global Cloud capacity. Citizens, private firms, states, and international organizations increasingly rely on their services, renting stock capacity, algorithmic elaboration, and AI functions. Such a position of power is reinforced by their growing control over many of the infrastructures that support the digital – datacenters, submarine fiber cables, power plants etc. How do we make sense of the power of Big Tech, and the growing importance of what we may call imperative “infrastructure rents”, i.e. rent relations that have become increasingly compulsory, inescapable and designed within the very infrastructural fabric of the world market?

Moving away from “presentism” may help us to properly contextualize and historicize this contemporary conjuncture. Current analyses of Big Tech ‘rentierism’, for instance, has pushed many to turn back to classic studies on “rentier states” and “imperialist rent”. Samir Amin, for instance, focusing on the impact of colonial control over extractive and logistical infrastructures, stressed that “to the extent that monopolies operate in the peripheries of the globalized system, monopoly rent becomes an imperialist rent” (Amin 2019). Similarly, Hazem Beblawi’s classic “The Rentier State in the Arab World” (1987: 383) stressed the emergence of “extraverted states”, whose main lever of power is the control over infrastructures enabling the extraction of rents. In particular, according to Beblawi, “transit countries” such as Egypt have long relied on their control over key global infrastructures – such as ports, railways, oil pipelines, and the Suez Canal – to extract and distribute “external location rent”.

This analysis may provide a point of entry to reflect upon the growing competition to control key “global infrastructures” such as pipelines and ports, power cables and fiber optic networks, transcontinental railways and highways. For instance, Loftus, March and Purcell (2019, 2020) have shown how processes of financialization have enabled “apparently fixed and stable forms such as pipes, water treatment plants, and sewers to be transformed into liquid assets”, opening up new opportunities for rent-extraction. More generally, Ranabir Samaddar (2018: 110) suggests that “the logistical expansion of the city […] resurrects the rent factor from oblivion in a capitalist economy”; and urgently asks: “What does the revival of the rent question mean for postcolonial accumulation?” These analyses emphasize that global infrastructures play a fundamental role in planetary processes of value-capture and rent-extraction.

Expanding on these debates, the conference intends to investigate the relation between “global infrastructures” and “practices of rent-extraction”, both historically and in the global present. We welcome contributions that investigate the relation between historical processes of infrastructuralisation, financialisation, and rentierisation of the economy. We are particularly interested in furthering a collective reflection on the ways in which rent relations extend well beyond land markets and shape the global circulation and capture of value across logistical, extractive and digital infrastructures.

Some possible questions that demand further reflection and analysis may be:

• What is the role played by global infrastructures in enabling practices of rent extraction by transnational corporations as well as national states?
• How is rent extracted in different geographical and historical contexts?
• What forms of labour(s) and knowledge(s) are mobilised in order to extract rents?
• How has the control over key infrastructures enabled the capture of value in colonial and post-colonial context?
• To what extent concepts such as ‘rentier capitalism’ and ‘techno-feudalism’ may further – or hinder – critical understandings of contemporary capitalism?
• How can we understand the relationship between ‘rentier states’, ‘rentier capitalism’ and ‘rentier imperialism’, both historically and in the present moment?
• Who has monopolistic control over key global infrastructures, and what sort of power results from such control?
• What forms of resistance to ‘rent extraction’ have been growing in recent years, from ‘rent strikes’ to cyberpiracy?

 

We welcome papers dealing with all these aspects from an interdisciplinary perspective. Interested scholars are invited to send an abstract and a short bio to Amedeo Policante [policante@fcsh.unl.pt] and Mattia Frapporti [mattia.frapporti2@unibo.it] by 15 September 2025. The final workshop will take place on 28 November 2025, at the University of Bologna.

 

>> Download the call for papers (PDF)

 

 

References:

– Amin, S. (2012). The surplus in monopoly capitalism and the imperialist rent. Monthly Review, 64(3), 78.
– Beblawi, H. (1987). The Rentier State in the Arab World. Arab Studies Quarterly, 9(4), 383–398.
– Birch, K., & Ward, C. (2023). Introduction: Critical approaches to rentiership. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 55(6), 1429-1437.
– Borg, E., & Policante, A. (2024). The Gene Editing Business: Rent Extraction in the Biotech Industry. Review of Political Economy, 1-36.
– Dean, J. (2025). Capital’s Grave: Neofeudalism and the New Class Struggle. Verso Books.
– Durand, C. (2024). How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-feudalism: The Making of the Digital Economy. Verso Books.
– Harvey, D. (2012). Ponzi Scheme Capitalism: An Interview with David Harvey by Steffen Böhm. Review31. [http://review31.co.uk/interview/view/16/]
– Lenin, V. (1917) Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, In: Essential Works of Lenin, New York, 1966, pp. 245-246.
– Christophers, B. (2020). Rentier capitalism: Who owns the economy, and who pays for it?. Verso Books.
– Mazzucato M (2019) Preventing digital feudalism. Project Syndicate. Available at: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/platform-economy-digital-feudalism-by-mariana-mazzucato-2019-10 (accessed 23 October 2024).
– Mezzadra, S., & Neilson, B. (2017). On the multiple frontiers of extraction: Excavating contemporary capitalism. Cultural studies, 31(2-3), 185-204.
– Mezzadra, S., Cuppini, N., Frapporti, M., Pirone, M., (2024). Capitalism in the Platform Age. Emerging Assemblages of Labour and Welfare in Urban Spaces. Berlin, Springer.
– Purcell, T. F., Loftus, A., & March, H. (2020). Value–rent–finance. Progress in human geography, 44(3), 437-456.
– Sadowski, J. (2020). The internet of landlords: Digital platforms and new mechanisms of rentier capitalism. Antipode, 52(2), 562-580.
– Samaddar, R. (2018). The logistical city. In India’s contemporary urban conundrum. Routledge, pp.104-115.
– Standing, G. (2021). The corruption of capitalism: Why rentiers thrive and work does not pay. Biteback Publishing.
– Varoufakis, Y. (2023) Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, Melville House.
– Vercellone, C. (2010) The Crisis of the Law of Value and the Becoming-Rent of Profit. In Fumagalli, A. & Mezzadra, S. (eds.) Crisis in the global economy: Financial Markets, Social Struggles, and New Political Scenarios, Semiotext(e), pp. 85-118.

 

Workshop aimed at researchers interested in applying social network analysis and other digital humanities tools to historical research.

 

Humanidades Digitais e Investigação:

Análise e visualização de redes

 

Com Anderson Pereira Antunes.

Este workshop visa:

• apresentar os princípios básicos da análise e visualização de redes sociais;
• demonstrar a diversidade de aplicação desta metodologia, sobretudo nas Humanidades;
• destacar como a visualização de redes amplia a comunicação científica (entre pares e para disseminação para o público não-académico);
• incentivar o uso crítico e criativo de novas metodologias e softwares como ferramentas de investigação.

 

Formato híbrido: Sala 295 do Colégio do Espirito Santo e online em https://meet.google.com/etg-bgfo-rrz

A participação é gratuita, mas é obrigatória inscrição prévia NESTE LINK.
Participação limitada a 50 pessoas no formato presencial.

Organização: IIFA e Instituto de História Contemporânea — Universidade de Évora

 

>> Descarregar folheto informativo (PDF) <<

 

This meeting seeks to encourage the participation and sharing of ideas calling on the voice of workers and the power of archives as a living tool for knowledge. Deadline: 10 November 2025

 

We are with you at home

Domestic work and collective action — Archives, memories, testimonies

 

In recent decades, the formation of a global economy of care and domestic services has become one of the central elements in understanding the transformations of work in capitalist societies (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2002; Lutz, 2011). This process of “international division of reproductive labour” (Parreñas, 2001; Anderson, 2007) is an example of how historical inequalities have been reconfigured and deepened in the transition from colonial to postcolonial contexts (Cox, 2006; Sartri, 2008). The absence of public care policies, combined with labour market deregulation and labour shortages in the sector, has produced a scenario of labour and social precariousness in which gender, ethnicity and class intersect. Employers’ preference for migrant workers—often without residence permits—has allowed the formation of a new servile class, characterised by fragile ties, an almost complete absence of rights and low wages (Giordano, 2022).

This context of structural vulnerability fuels the idea that domestic and care work is marked by social invisibility and a supposed inability to mobilise collectively. However, this interpretation tends to obscure the long history of resistance and organisational experiences led by these workers. Since the 19th century, multiple examples of labour demands and struggles against oppressive practices demonstrate that the sector, far from being disorganised, has been the scene of various forms of mobilisation for better working conditions (Anderson, 2001; Boris and Nadassen, 2008; Gutiérrez-Rodríguez, 2010). To recover and reflect on this historical trajectory is not only an exercise of remembrance, but a necessary step to reinscribe domestic and care work in the global history of labour struggles, challenging narratives that seek to naturalise its subalternity.

 

DOMESTIC AND ARCHIVAL WORK

The title of this meeting is taken from a letter sent by a domestic worker to her union, kept in an archive, with no date, no sender or recipient, only a handwritten note: archive. It reads: ‘And never think you are alone, we are with you in the house where we work.’

We took inspiration for this meeting from this short excerpt, part of a text that describes, in the first person, the early migration to the city of Lisbon to work in someone else’s home at the age of seven.

Work on the archives of women workers’ organisations and the increased focus on trade unionism in the domestic service sector has received growing attention in recent years, throughout the world, partly driven by a renewed interest in the intersection of gender, class and migration inequalities in the sphere of paid domestic work. At this meeting, which will take place on 6 and 7 February 2026 in Lisbon, we are opening a space for, based on the project A Voz das Trabalhadoras (The Voice of Women Workers: The Archives of the Domestic Service Union [1974-1992]), to gather contributions from different geographical areas and fields of practice that intersect around domestic work, care and cleaning — and their articulation with forms of collective action, cooperativism, trade unionism, and memory construction.

Thus, with immersion in trade union archives and experiences of self-management and cooperativism in domestic service as our main starting point, we invite submissions of proposals that focus on the various repertoires of organisation and struggle adopted by workers in this sector/activity, focusing on oral history or archival research, the narration of experiences and self-representations of working conditions and contexts.

 

A TRANSNATIONAL AND INTERDISCIPLINARY DIALOGUE

Seeking to establish a transnational and interdisciplinary dialogue on these experiences, contributions are welcome in the following areas:

1. Archival practices of/on domestic work;
2. Migratory flows, citizenship, gender, and racialisation in domestic, cleaning, and care work;
3. Collective action, cooperativism, and trade unionism in domestic work.

 

This meeting seeks to encourage the participation and sharing of ideas among activists, artists, researchers, workers and trade unions — calling on the voice of workers and the power of archives as a living tool for knowledge, learning and transformation.

 

 

Call for papers

 

We therefore invite proposals from different disciplinary fields and with different methodological approaches, welcoming the intersection of perspectives. The Meeting welcomes proposals from:

a) artists (performance, theatre, audiovisual);
b) researchers, archivists, activists and students;
c) domestic and care workers (collectives, cooperatives, trade unions)

 

Who, where, how?
Send short abstracts (max. 500 words) with a brief biography by 10 November 2025. Submissions to: encontro.trabalhodomestico2026@gmail.com.

Accepted languages: Portuguese, Spanish, English.

Venues: NOVA FCSH, Cape Verde Cultural Centre (Lisbon)

Organisation: CICS.NOVA and IHC

 

 

 

>> Download the call for papers (PDF) <<

 

 

 

 

Organising Committee

 

Ackssana Silva
Elsa Nogueira
Inês Brasão
José Soeiro
Mafalda Araújo
Nuno Ferreira Dias

 

 

Conference that seeks to challenge historical revisionism, amplify marginalised voices, and foster transnational dialogues on reconciliation, accountability, and restorative justice. Deadline: 30 November 2025

 

The Public History of Difficult Pasts

8th International Conference on Public History

IFPH 2026

 

The 8th International Conference on Public History, organised by the International Federation for Public History, IFPH, will take place in Lisbon from September 7 to 11, 2026. It will be hosted by IN2PAST – the Associate Laboratory for Research and Innovation in Heritage, Arts, Sustainability and Territory, a transdisciplinary consortium of seven research centres, at the Almada Negreiros College on the Campolide Campus of NOVA University Lisbon.

In a time of escalating attacks by right-wing movements on memory, diversity, human rights, democracy, and history itself, the IFPH reaffirms its commitment to fostering critical engagement with the ways societies confront, interpret, and relate to their difficult pasts and challenging presents. The IFPH strongly condemns book banning, the censorship of historical narratives, the surveillance of students and educators, the targeting of sites of remembrance, and the imposition of ideological agendas — particularly right-wing distortions — that not only threaten academic freedom but undermine the very principles upon which public history is built. Against this backdrop, the conference seeks to challenge historical revisionism and silencing, to amplify marginalised voices and memories, and to promote transnational dialogues on reconciliation, accountability, and restorative justice.

Public History has long addressed global historical processes such as colonialism, the transatlantic slave trade, and the genocide of Indigenous peoples, as well as phenomena that emerge in multiple contexts, including armed conflicts and dictatorships. It embodies both a political and ethical commitment to examining how difficult pasts have been lived and remembered by different communities and individuals, ensuring that their perspectives are acknowledged and respected. At the same time, engaging with these histories through Public History raises significant challenges. Sharing authority with specific communities and amplifying marginalised narratives may unintentionally silence other voices, while also presenting complex ethical dilemmas. Furthermore, Public History operates within the public sphere, engaging diverse audiences and navigating competing representations of the past in an era increasingly marked by the political instrumentalisation of history and the spread of revisionist and denialist discourses.

 

 

Call for contributions

 

This conference seeks to challenge historical revisionism, amplify marginalised voices, and foster transnational dialogues on reconciliation, accountability, and restorative justice. We invite contributions that explore:

 

Historical Contexts and Global Processes

• • Colonialism and its enduring legacies
  • The transatlantic slave trade and its commemorations
  • Indigenous genocide and cultural destruction
  • Armed conflicts, civil wars, and their aftermath
  • Dictatorships, authoritarianism, and state violence
  • Mass atrocities and crimes against humanity

Contemporary Challenges and Methodological Innovations

• • Countering historical denial and revisionism
  • Navigating contested memories and competing narratives
  • Sharing authority with affected communities
  • Ethical dilemmas in representing traumatic pasts
  • Digital humanities, media, and social networks
  • Museum practices and memorial sites
  • Archives, and archival activism
  • Educational approaches to sensitive histories

Voices and Perspectives

• • Survivor testimonies and intergenerational trauma
  • Community-based historical projects
  • Oral history and marginalised narratives
  • Gender, sexuality, and intersectional approaches
  • Youth engagement with difficult pasts
  • Transnational and comparative perspectives

Justice and Reconciliation

• • Truth commissions and transitional justice
  • Reparations and historical redress
  • Memorialisation and commemoration practices
  • Restorative justice approaches
  • Healing and collective memory
  • Building inclusive historical narratives

 

 

Calendar

Opening of the Call for Presentations: 30 September 2025
Deadline for Application: 30 November 2025
Deadline for reviewers to do their reviews: 31 January 2026
Call for posters: January 2026
Results of the Call for Presentations will be announced by March 2026
Programme of the conference shall be available around June 2026
Deadline for registration for on-site attendance: August 2026
Conference: 7-11 September 2026

 

Submission of proposals

🔗 Submit your panel proposal HERE.
🔗 Submit your paper proposal HERE.
🔗 Submit your Working Group proposal HERE.

 

>> Download the call for papers (PDF) <<

 

 

Picture: Peniche Fortress, Fortim Redondo, site of the infamous isolation cells (‘Segredo’) (Credit: © Paulo)

 

This meeting seeks to encourage the participation and sharing of ideas calling on the voice of workers and the power of archives as a living tool for knowledge. Deadline: 10 November 2025

 

We are with you at home

Domestic work and collective action — Archives, memories, testimonies

 

In recent decades, the formation of a global economy of care and domestic services has become one of the central elements in understanding the transformations of work in capitalist societies (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2002; Lutz, 2011). This process of “international division of reproductive labour” (Parreñas, 2001; Anderson, 2007) is an example of how historical inequalities have been reconfigured and deepened in the transition from colonial to postcolonial contexts (Cox, 2006; Sartri, 2008). The absence of public care policies, combined with labour market deregulation and labour shortages in the sector, has produced a scenario of labour and social precariousness in which gender, ethnicity and class intersect. Employers’ preference for migrant workers—often without residence permits—has allowed the formation of a new servile class, characterised by fragile ties, an almost complete absence of rights and low wages (Giordano, 2022).

This context of structural vulnerability fuels the idea that domestic and care work is marked by social invisibility and a supposed inability to mobilise collectively. However, this interpretation tends to obscure the long history of resistance and organisational experiences led by these workers. Since the 19th century, multiple examples of labour demands and struggles against oppressive practices demonstrate that the sector, far from being disorganised, has been the scene of various forms of mobilisation for better working conditions (Anderson, 2001; Boris and Nadassen, 2008; Gutiérrez-Rodríguez, 2010). To recover and reflect on this historical trajectory is not only an exercise of remembrance, but a necessary step to reinscribe domestic and care work in the global history of labour struggles, challenging narratives that seek to naturalise its subalternity.

 

DOMESTIC AND ARCHIVAL WORK

The title of this meeting is taken from a letter sent by a domestic worker to her union, kept in an archive, with no date, no sender or recipient, only a handwritten note: archive. It reads: ‘And never think you are alone, we are with you in the house where we work.’

We took inspiration for this meeting from this short excerpt, part of a text that describes, in the first person, the early migration to the city of Lisbon to work in someone else’s home at the age of seven.

Work on the archives of women workers’ organisations and the increased focus on trade unionism in the domestic service sector has received growing attention in recent years, throughout the world, partly driven by a renewed interest in the intersection of gender, class and migration inequalities in the sphere of paid domestic work. At this meeting, which will take place on 6 and 7 February 2026 in Lisbon, we are opening a space for, based on the project A Voz das Trabalhadoras (The Voice of Women Workers: The Archives of the Domestic Service Union [1974-1992]), to gather contributions from different geographical areas and fields of practice that intersect around domestic work, care and cleaning — and their articulation with forms of collective action, cooperativism, trade unionism, and memory construction.

Thus, with immersion in trade union archives and experiences of self-management and cooperativism in domestic service as our main starting point, we invite submissions of proposals that focus on the various repertoires of organisation and struggle adopted by workers in this sector/activity, focusing on oral history or archival research, the narration of experiences and self-representations of working conditions and contexts.

 

A TRANSNATIONAL AND INTERDISCIPLINARY DIALOGUE

Seeking to establish a transnational and interdisciplinary dialogue on these experiences, contributions are welcome in the following areas:

1. Archival practices of/on domestic work;
2. Migratory flows, citizenship, gender, and racialisation in domestic, cleaning, and care work;
3. Collective action, cooperativism, and trade unionism in domestic work.

 

This meeting seeks to encourage the participation and sharing of ideas among activists, artists, researchers, workers and trade unions — calling on the voice of workers and the power of archives as a living tool for knowledge, learning and transformation.

 

 

Call for papers

 

We therefore invite proposals from different disciplinary fields and with different methodological approaches, welcoming the intersection of perspectives. The Meeting welcomes proposals from:

a) artists (performance, theatre, audiovisual);
b) researchers, archivists, activists and students;
c) domestic and care workers (collectives, cooperatives, trade unions)

 

Who, where, how?
Send short abstracts (max. 500 words) with a brief biography by 10 November 2025. Submissions to: encontro.trabalhodomestico2026@gmail.com.

Accepted languages: Portuguese, Spanish, English.

Venues: NOVA FCSH, Cape Verde Cultural Centre (Lisbon)

Organisation: CICS.NOVA and IHC

 

 

 

>> Download the call for papers (PDF) <<

 

 

 

 

Organising Committee

 

Ackssana Silva
Elsa Nogueira
Inês Brasão
José Soeiro
Mafalda Araújo
Nuno Ferreira Dias

 

 

Conference that seeks to challenge historical revisionism, amplify marginalised voices, and foster transnational dialogues on reconciliation, accountability, and restorative justice. Deadline: 30 November 2025

 

The Public History of Difficult Pasts

8th International Conference on Public History

IFPH 2026

 

The 8th International Conference on Public History, organised by the International Federation for Public History, IFPH, will take place in Lisbon from September 7 to 11, 2026. It will be hosted by IN2PAST – the Associate Laboratory for Research and Innovation in Heritage, Arts, Sustainability and Territory, a transdisciplinary consortium of seven research centres, at the Almada Negreiros College on the Campolide Campus of NOVA University Lisbon.

In a time of escalating attacks by right-wing movements on memory, diversity, human rights, democracy, and history itself, the IFPH reaffirms its commitment to fostering critical engagement with the ways societies confront, interpret, and relate to their difficult pasts and challenging presents. The IFPH strongly condemns book banning, the censorship of historical narratives, the surveillance of students and educators, the targeting of sites of remembrance, and the imposition of ideological agendas — particularly right-wing distortions — that not only threaten academic freedom but undermine the very principles upon which public history is built. Against this backdrop, the conference seeks to challenge historical revisionism and silencing, to amplify marginalised voices and memories, and to promote transnational dialogues on reconciliation, accountability, and restorative justice.

Public History has long addressed global historical processes such as colonialism, the transatlantic slave trade, and the genocide of Indigenous peoples, as well as phenomena that emerge in multiple contexts, including armed conflicts and dictatorships. It embodies both a political and ethical commitment to examining how difficult pasts have been lived and remembered by different communities and individuals, ensuring that their perspectives are acknowledged and respected. At the same time, engaging with these histories through Public History raises significant challenges. Sharing authority with specific communities and amplifying marginalised narratives may unintentionally silence other voices, while also presenting complex ethical dilemmas. Furthermore, Public History operates within the public sphere, engaging diverse audiences and navigating competing representations of the past in an era increasingly marked by the political instrumentalisation of history and the spread of revisionist and denialist discourses.

 

 

Call for contributions

 

This conference seeks to challenge historical revisionism, amplify marginalised voices, and foster transnational dialogues on reconciliation, accountability, and restorative justice. We invite contributions that explore:

 

Historical Contexts and Global Processes

• • Colonialism and its enduring legacies
  • The transatlantic slave trade and its commemorations
  • Indigenous genocide and cultural destruction
  • Armed conflicts, civil wars, and their aftermath
  • Dictatorships, authoritarianism, and state violence
  • Mass atrocities and crimes against humanity

Contemporary Challenges and Methodological Innovations

• • Countering historical denial and revisionism
  • Navigating contested memories and competing narratives
  • Sharing authority with affected communities
  • Ethical dilemmas in representing traumatic pasts
  • Digital humanities, media, and social networks
  • Museum practices and memorial sites
  • Archives, and archival activism
  • Educational approaches to sensitive histories

Voices and Perspectives

• • Survivor testimonies and intergenerational trauma
  • Community-based historical projects
  • Oral history and marginalised narratives
  • Gender, sexuality, and intersectional approaches
  • Youth engagement with difficult pasts
  • Transnational and comparative perspectives

Justice and Reconciliation

• • Truth commissions and transitional justice
  • Reparations and historical redress
  • Memorialisation and commemoration practices
  • Restorative justice approaches
  • Healing and collective memory
  • Building inclusive historical narratives

 

 

Calendar

Opening of the Call for Presentations: 30 September 2025
Deadline for Application: 30 November 2025
Deadline for reviewers to do their reviews: 31 January 2026
Call for posters: January 2026
Results of the Call for Presentations will be announced by March 2026
Programme of the conference shall be available around June 2026
Deadline for registration for on-site attendance: August 2026
Conference: 7-11 September 2026

 

Submission of proposals

🔗 Submit your panel proposal HERE.
🔗 Submit your paper proposal HERE.
🔗 Submit your Working Group proposal HERE.

 

>> Download the call for papers (PDF) <<

 

 

Picture: Peniche Fortress, Fortim Redondo, site of the infamous isolation cells (‘Segredo’) (Credit: © Paulo)