The IHC is one of the hosting institutions of the 8th International Conference on Public History, organised by the International Federation for Public History (IFPH), which will take place for the first time in Lisbon, under the theme ‘The Public History of Difficult Pasts’.

One of the IFPH’s objectives for this conference is to promote a “critical engagement with the ways societies confront, interpret, and relate to their difficult pasts and challenging presents”, at a “time of escalating attacks by right-wing movements on memory, diversity, human rights, democracy, and history itself”. As such, “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”.

The keynote address will be delivered by Noor Nieftagodien, from the University of the Witwatersrand, who will discuss public history and emancipatory politics in the transition from the struggle against apartheid to democracy in South Africa. During the conference, the tenth anniversary of the journal International Public History will also be celebrated, and the book Public History, Gender, and Power in Latin American Museums: Women Curators and Cultural Leaders, edited by María Elena Bedoya and Jimena Perry (Routledge, 2026), will be launched.

Admission to the conference is free, and it will take place from 7 to 10 September at the Almada Negreiros College, part of the NOVA School of Social and Human Sciences. On 11 September, participants will have the opportunity to take a guided tour, led by Sofia Lisboa, of the National Museum of Resistance and Freedom in Peniche.