Within the scope of its current strategic project, the Institute of Contemporary History has renewed and reinforced its team of researchers with a doctoral degree. It is with great pleasure and as a recognition that we provide an overview of these new researchers, arriving from other national and international institutions.

The Renewal of Economic and Social History at the IHC

As part of the renewal of our research in the field of economic history and social history, we are joined by Jorge Pedreira, Associate Professor at NOVA FCSH, historian of the modern and contemporary eras, who will develop a collective project on the most recent Portuguese past. Also in the economic and social sphere, Fernando Ampudia de Haro, Spanish historian and sociologist, professor at the European University who, like Jorge Pedreira, has also contributed to the field of historical sociology —in the case of Ampuda de Haro with a focus on Iberian contexts; and Gonçalo Leite Velho, with a PhD in archeology, professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Tomar and, in recent years, in addition to presiding over SNESUP, a researcher dedicated to the study of the transformations of university models of governance and innovation. Under the individual CEEC program (promoted by the FCT), soon we will be joined by the historian Victor Pereira, professor at the University of Pau (France), who will start a contract as Principal Investigator, continuing — now in a comparative key — his work on the history of emigration, involving the European, African and Brazilian contexts.

Furthermore, still in the field of economic history and social history, but also in the history of economic thought, we will welcome three new researchers who will benefit from three post-doctoral fellowships, awarded by the IHC following an international public competition and under our current strategic project: the Brazilian historian Bruno Zorek, with a PhD from the State University of Campinas, who will develop, for three years, a project in the field of the history of economic thought, centered on debates about the interpretations of the Brazilian colonial economy produced in the contemporary era; the Spanish historian Rubén Pérez Trujillano, who developed a doctoral research on criminal justice in the Second Spanish Republic and who will also investigate, in the next three years, the relationship between inter-war constitutionalism and the labour market in that same historical context ; and the historian Miguel Carmo, with a PhD from the Instituto Superior de Agronomia of the University of Lisbon, who will develop, for the same period, an project around the political, economic and social history of the great fires in Portugal in the second half of the 20th century.

Comparative Political History

One of the core research areas at the IHC, ever since its foundation, has been our group of Comparative Political History, that is now reinforced by three new PhD researchers. Within the scope of the individual CEEC program, we will welcome the historian Arturo Zoffmann Rodriguez, recently graduated from the European University Institute (Florence), who will soon begin a project dedicated to the study of the Free Trade Unions in Barcelona, far right labour organizations, and their relationship with the rise of Fascism in Spain, Italy, Portugal, and France. Coinciding with the Portuguese Communist Party’s centenary, we have welcomed historian Adelino Cunha, professor at the European University and, among other works, author of biographies about Álvaro Cunhal and Júlio Fogaça. Finally, it is also with great satisfaction that we acknowledge the return of historian Susana Martins, adjunct professor at the School of Higher Education in Lisbon and author of several studies on the history of oppositions to the Estado Novo, with a particular focus on the issues of Portuguese exile, anti-colonialism, and deportation.

Colonialism, Anti-colonialism and Post-colonialism

Strengthening of our research in the field of studies on colonialism, anti-colonialism and post-colonialism, we are joined by our colleagues Fernando Tavares Pimenta, hired under our strategic project, who will continue his studies on the Portuguese Empire in the 20th century; Manuela Ribeiro Sanches, who will continue with us her work on comparative, historiographical and theoretical research about anti-colonialism, in dialogue with post-colonial studies, of which she was a pioneer in Portugal; Catarina Laranjeiro, PhD from CES (University of Coimbra), who will develop a project, under the individual CEEC program, on the relationship between the colonial legacy of images and the production of popular cinema on the African continent; Maria do Mar Gago, recently graduated at the ICS (University of Lisbon), currently Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, and who, also under the individual CEEC program, will develop research on the importance of the cultivation of robusta coffee in defining the nature of the Portuguese colonialism and the imagination of new political relations on a global scale.

Artistic Studies and Cultural History at the IHC

The importance of Cultural History and Artistic Studies for the IHC is also reinforced with arrival of Lee Douglas. A former postdoctoral researcher at the Reina Sofia Museum, and until recently a professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture at New York University – Madrid, Lee Douglas joins the IHC thanks to the European Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, which will support her project “Militant Imaginaries , Colonial Memories: The Visual & Material Traces of Revolution & Return in Contemporary Portugal”. In the field of cinema studies, our team is also joined by: Raquel Schefer, who will develop the project “The trance of the real: modernism and primitivism in cinema anti-colonial and post-colonial” under a postdoctoral fellowship awarded by FCT, which, like Douglas, also reinforces the importance of studies on colonialism, anti-colonialism and post-colonialism at the IHC; Patrícia Sequeira Brás, that graduated from Birkbeck College with a thesis about the work of Pedro Costa and a former professor at the same institution, as well as at Queen Mary’s, also in London, and who is preparing a project bout documentary cinema and feminism; and, finally, Leonor Areal, invited Assistant Professor at the Superior School of Arts and Design of Caldas da Rainha, of the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, who will continue with us her work in the field of cinema history, with a particular focus on silent movies.

But it is also in the general fields of artistic studies and cultural history that our team is strengthened. Regarding visual culture, we now count on the art historian Filomena Serra, whose research agenda will reinforce IHC’s interest in the history of photography, following the FCT-funded project “Fotografia Impressa. Image and Propaganda in Portugal (1934-1974)”, of which Serra was PI. Reinforcing the disciplinary importance of anthropology for the IHC, our team also counts on Vera Marques Alves, that has authored important works on nationalism and popular culture during Estado Novo, as well as intervening in the debates about the current condition of museums and ethnographic collections — a concern that the IHC will also approach in the context of the future IN2PAST Associate Laboratory. And lastly, within the scope of the History of Education, the IHC is also joined by Maria Romeiras Amado, author of several publications in the field of ​​the History of Disability, with a special interest in the History of Blindness, placing her research in the Modern and Contemporary periods and with particular attention to the transmissibility of discourses and adapted teaching resources.

The IHC Board of Directors