A discussion on the representations and uses of the medieval past in the modern era, with Pedro Martins and Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri.

 

The Medieval in Modern Times

A conversation on Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri’s The Militant Middle Ages and Pedro Martins’ Representing the Middle Ages in Modern Portugal (1890-1947)

 

Vista ora como época de superstição ou de progresso, de barbárie ou de cavalheirismo, de violência ou de harmonia, a Idade Média não tem deixado de despertar o nosso interesse desde o século XIX.

Entendido como elemento para a construção de nações modernas, campo de batalha político ou fonte de inspiração para a produção cultural e artística, o passado medieval tem sido um dos mais importantes espelhos para reflexão do que a nossa sociedade foi, das angústias e anseios do tempo presente, bem como dos valores que pretendemos projetar no futuro.

Aproveitando o recente lançamento da obra de Pedro Martins (IHC – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST), Representing the Middle Ages in Modern Portugal (1890-1947). Historiography, Heritage, and Commemoration, bem como a publicação de The Militant Middle Ages. Contemporary Politics between New Barbarians and Modern Crusaders, de Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri (Universidade de Urbino) (ambas editadas pela Brill Publishers), o Instituto de História Contemporânea organiza uma conversa em torno das representações e usos do passado medieval na época contemporânea.

A discussão será moderada por José Neves (IHC – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST) e contará com a presença dos dois autores, bem como de Maria de Lurdes Rosa e de Paul Sturtevant – ambos investigadores do Instituto de História Contemporânea e especialistas em medievalismo – que farão um comentário às duas obras.

 

 

This initiative forms part of the visit to Lisbon by historian Pedro Cerdeira (University of Geneva), winner of the fourth Amílcar Cabral Prize.

 

Desconstruir o Colonialismo: Entre Tradição e Revolução

 

Iniciativa integrada na visita de Pedro Cerdeira (Universidade de Genebra) a Lisboa, o vencedor da quarta edição do Prémio Amílcar Cabral.

Na primeira parte da sessão, numa aula pública, o historiador Victor Barros vai falar sobre a relação entre anti-colonismo e imaginários revolucionários, sobretudo a partir do caso da luta de libertação nas colónias portuguesas. Na segunda parte, três doutorandos do IHC vão apresentar o seu trabalho, com comentário de Pedro Cerdeira. A tarde culmina com uma palestra do premiado acerca do artigo “Rural Schools, Farm Co-Operatives and the Late Colonial Recreation of African Rurality in Guinea-Bissau”, publicado no e-Journal of Portuguese History em 2025.

O Prémio Amílcar Cabral é promovido pelo Instituto de História Contemporânea e pelo Padrão dos Descobrimentos / Lisboa Cultura.

ENTRADA LIVRE

 

Programa:

 

14h00-15h00: Aula Pública

Víctor Barros (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST): Independências africanas, imaginários e constelações de lutas

15h15-16h45: Apresentação e discussão de investigações em curso

Henrique Oliveira (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST): As Guerras de Libertação e a Ponte – Transimperialismo, industrialização e economia militar no financiamento da Ponte sobre o Tejo (1962-1967)
Rebeca Ávila (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST): Do Terceiro Mundo à Europa: Cuba e Portugal entre revolução e democracia (1974-1982)
Samira Miranda (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST): A independência de Cabo Verde e os discursos sobre a preservação dos legados coloniais: o caso da Cidade Velha, na ilha de Santiago

Moderação de Bárbara Direito (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST) e comentário de Pedro Cerdeira (Universidade de Genebra)

17h00-18h: Entrega do Prémio Amílcar Cabral e palestra do premiado

Pedro Cerdeira (Universidade de Genebra): Escolas rurais, cooperativas agrícolas e a recriação colonial tardia da ruralidade africana na Guiné-Bissau

 

 

>> Descarregar o programa e resumos (PDF) <<

 

 

 

Open lecture by Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri, Visiting Researcher at the IHC, on medieval studies, the Middle Ages and their reception in later periods.

 

Medievalism as Method: Reframing the Discipline of Medieval Studies

 

Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri doutorou-se em História Medieval pela Universidade Católica de Milão. Desde 1998, é professor na Universidade de Urbino, onde ocupa, actualmente, o cargo de Professor Catedrático de História Medieval. Os seus principais temas de investigação são a história de Roma, da Igreja Romana e da Itália Central na Idade Média, com um foco específico nas fontes históricas e nas relações entre o facto histórico e a sua representação no imaginário. Actualmente, os seus interesses focam-se também nas representações da Idade Média após a Idade Média, os chamados medievalismos. Sobre este assunto publicou o livro intitulado Medioevo militante (Einaudi), também traduzido para espanhol (El presente medieval, Icaria), para francês (Médiéval et militante, Publications de la Sorbonne) e para inglês (The Militant Middle Ages, Brill). As suas publicações mais recentes incluem: Nel labirinto del passato. 10 modi di riscrivere la storia (Laterza, 2020); Cola di Rienzo (Salerno Editrice, 2024); La Storia al contrario (Salerno editrice, 2025).

Esta aula aberta é destinada a todas/os as/os estudantes e aqueles/as interessadas/os na Idade Média e a sua recepção em épocas posteriores.

A iniciativa é organizada pelo Instituto de Estudos Medievais e o Instituto de História Contemporânea da NOVA FCSH.

 

🔗 Participação por MSTeams

 

 

Research seminar that seeks to expand the field of oil studies beyond established narratives, geographies, and disciplinary boundaries, amplifying perspectives from the Global South and other sites of extraction and resistance.

 

Mind the Gap III:

Unearthing Petromodernity: Oil Studies in the Anthropocene

Online Research Seminar

 

The rise of fossil fuels has been central to the political, economic, cultural, and material transformations of the past two centuries, yet the forms of power, knowledge, and life enabled by carbon energy often remain analytically invisible. As we confront the converging crises of the Anthropocene, the need to rethink the centrality of fossil fuels to modern life has never been more urgent.

At a moment when toxic landscapes, resource frontiers, and environmental inequality reveal the uneven geographies of fossil modernity, the humanities and social sciences are reorienting analytical attention toward the energetic foundations of modern life. From pipelines and refineries to plastics and everyday petrochemical products, the material properties of oil have fundamentally shaped modern infrastructures and forms of life. What forms of political and social power are created through fossil fuel industries? How have fossil fuels shaped modern societies, their economic models, governmental regimes, everyday lives? How have they contributed to uneven global geographies rooted in colonialism and capitalism? What kinds of transitions to post-carbon futures are possible?

Bringing together approaches from history, anthropology, political ecology, and geography, we seek to expand the field of oil studies beyond established narratives, geographies, and disciplinary boundaries, amplifying perspectives from the Global South and other sites of extraction and resistance.

 

🔗 Free registration here

📎 Download full programme (PDF)

 

 

Programme:

 

Every fortnight we will meet online to discuss an article or book chapter circulated in advance. The sessions will start with a 20–30 minute presentation, followed by discussion. The sessions will take place on Mondays at 2PM.

We will explore key concepts such as petro-culture, carbon democracy, extractivism, fossil capital, energy regimes, and transition imaginaries, examining how energy dependence shapes modern subjectivities, infrastructures, economies, and ecological futures. The texts will be shared with participants in advance.

Everyone is welcome.

To register, please fill out the online form. After registering you will receive the readings and access information ahead of each session.

For more information, please write to unearthingpetromodernity@proton.me.

 

 

30 March  |  Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. Selected chapter TBA (Verso, 2011)
Davide Scarso (CIUHCT — FCT NOVA)
Focus: How fossil fuels structured democratic politics, labour power and modern governance

13 April  |  Adam Hanieh, “Petrochemical Empire: The Geo-Politics of Fossil-Fuelled Production“ New Left Review (139)
Ricardo Noronha (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Global production networks, the Gulf region and the restructuring of capitalism through petrochemicals

27 April  |  Carola Hein (ed.), Oil Spaces: Exploring the Global Petroleumscape. Chapter 8: Peyerl, D. “Building Brazil’s Petroleumscape on Land and Sea: Infrastructure, Expertise, and Technology” (Routledge, 2022)
Henrique Oliveira (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Infrastructure, territorial development and the spatial materiality of oil

11 May  |  Stephanie LeMenager, Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century. Selected chapter TBA (Oxford University Pres, 2014)
Raquel Ribeiro (CHAM — NOVA FCSH)
Focus: Oil, media, culture, and everyday life in twentieth-century society

25 May  |  Appel, Mason & Watts (Eds.), Subterranean Estates: Life Worlds of Oil and Gas. Introduction: “Oil Talk” (Cornell University Press, 2015)
Amedeo Policante (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Anthropological and political-economic perspectives on oil extraction and everyday life

8 June  |  Alice Mah, Petrochemical Planet: Multiscalar Battles of Industrial Transformation. Chapter 2: “Enduring Toxic Injustice and Fenceline Mobilizations” (Duke University Press, 2023)
João Pedro Santos (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Environmental justice, pollution, and grassroots activism around petrochemical industries

22 June  |  Chelsea Schields, Offshore Attachments: Oil and Intimacy in the Caribbean. Introduction and Chapter 1. “Crude Bargains” (University of California Press, 2023)
Anita Buhin (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Oil economies, intimacy, and social relations in offshore extraction zones

6 July  |  Tim Di Muzio & Matt Dow, “Global capitalism and oil“ in Handbook on Oil and International Relations (Edward Elgar Publishing , 2022)
Davide Scarso (CIUHCT — FCT NOVA), Amedeo Policante & Ricardo Noronha (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Oil in international relations, financialization and the structure of global capitalism

 

 

Organisation:

Davide Scarso (CIUHCT — FCT NOVA)
Amedeo Policante (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Ricardo Noronha (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)

 

 

A conference aimed at exploring the potential of the intersection between the social sciences and literature, through a literary work and its role in interpreting social processes. 

 

Literatura e Sociedade

 

As ciências sociais podem ser literárias, propôs Ivan Jablonka, com o derrubamento da fronteira entre a literatura e a História. Para explorar essa relação feliz, convidámos um conjunto de pesquisadores/as a examinar as potencialidades do encontro entre as ciências sociais e a literatura, através de uma obra literária, escolhida pelos participantes, e do seu papel na leitura dos processos sociais. A etnografia, a história, a sociologia, a ciência política, os estudos culturais, contribuem com factos e conceitos, a literatura trabalha-os pela escrita, para ultrapassar as fronteiras entre o íntimo e subjetivo, os temas graves e colectivos, os acontecimentos, as sociedades, as instituições, as resistências e os movimentos sociais. Como recordava Maurice Godelier, a ficção contém mais do que o imaginado e imaginário, porque ajusta ao suporte de um livro vários componentes dos mundos, reais e irreais, com personagens, acontecimentos, símbolos, conferindo legibilidade às sociedades e suas dimensões. Quer o passado, cujo conhecimento resulta do trabalho sobre fontes de diversa etiologia, que abrem o campo das possibilidades do conhecimento, quer os futuros em disputa, de modo prospectivo, confrontam quem investiga com campos de possibilidades. Seja pela base documental, seja pelo encadeamento causal, a literatura não é só um mundo de seres imaginários, oposto ao mundo da realidade efectiva. Com Jacques Rancière, consideramos que a ficção é uma estrutura de racionalidade que permite comparar traços esparsos na construção de situações e de personagens identificáveis, designar acontecimentos, estabelecer ligações entre esses acontecimentos e dar-lhes um sentido. É dessa matéria que partimos nesta conferência.

 

>> Programa (PDF) <<

 

Organização:

Maria Alice Samara (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Débora Dias (CHAM — NOVA FCSH)
Elena Freire (USC)
Paula Godinho (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)

 

Locais:

Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Lisboa
Casa da Achada — Centro Mário Dionísio, Lisboa
Museu do Neo-Realismo, Vila Franca de Xira

 

 

A forum for discussion on the processes of the internationalisation of science and their impact on the production and circulation of knowledge.

 

Ciência e Internacionalização: A Pesquisa no Jardim do Mundo

 

O seminário A Ciência e a Internacionalização: a pesquisa no jardim do mundo propõe um espaço de discussão sobre os processos de internacionalização da ciência e seus impactos na produção e circulação do conhecimento. A programação contará com a participação de grupos de pesquisa que apresentarão seus projetos, destacando experiências, parcerias institucionais e estratégias de inserção em redes académicas nacionais e internacionais. As exposições visam evidenciar práticas, desafios e perspectivas no desenvolvimento de pesquisas em diálogo com diferentes contextos globais.

O encontro destina-se a investigadores/as, estudantes e demais interessados/as na temática, promovendo a troca de conhecimentos e o fortalecimento de iniciativas colaborativas no campo científico.

 

>> Inscrição

>> Programa (PDF)

 

 

 

A conversation between Anna Dobrowolska, author of the book “Polish Sexual Revolutions”, and Anita Buhin and Giulia Strippoli.

 

Polish Sexual Revolutions:

Negotiating Sexuality and Modernity behind the Iron Curtain

 

A conversation between Anna Dobrowolska, author of the book Polish Sexual Revolutions (Oxford University Press, 2025), and Anita Buhin and Giulia Strippoli.

 

About the book:
Polish Sexual Revolutions: Negotiating Sexuality and Modernity behind the Iron Curtain studies the history of sexuality in state-socialist Poland in its European and global contexts, focusing on how communism transformed both sexual discourses and intimate practices between 1945 and 1989. It reconfigures our understanding of the sexual revolution, departing from the case study of Poland to complicate the oversimplified and much-misused concepts of ‘sexual modernity’ and ‘progress’. Engaging with the most recent scholarship on sexuality in East Central Europe and a wide range of unused primary material, including visual and material sources, the monograph reassesses the role played by communist states in modernising their citizens’ approaches to sex. Contrary to the stereotype which perceives the region as ‘lagging behind’ the West in sexual matters and having to ‘catch up’ after 1989, the book sheds light on the ambiguous and progressive histories of state-socialist entanglements with sex to showcase alternative visions of sexual liberation. In so doing, and by focusing on forgotten genealogies of discussions of sexuality, the monograph historicises the roots of contemporary debates on sex education, LGBTQ+ and women’s rights in the region.

 

 

Research seminar that seeks to expand the field of oil studies beyond established narratives, geographies, and disciplinary boundaries, amplifying perspectives from the Global South and other sites of extraction and resistance.

 

Mind the Gap III:

Unearthing Petromodernity: Oil Studies in the Anthropocene

Online Research Seminar

 

The rise of fossil fuels has been central to the political, economic, cultural, and material transformations of the past two centuries, yet the forms of power, knowledge, and life enabled by carbon energy often remain analytically invisible. As we confront the converging crises of the Anthropocene, the need to rethink the centrality of fossil fuels to modern life has never been more urgent.

At a moment when toxic landscapes, resource frontiers, and environmental inequality reveal the uneven geographies of fossil modernity, the humanities and social sciences are reorienting analytical attention toward the energetic foundations of modern life. From pipelines and refineries to plastics and everyday petrochemical products, the material properties of oil have fundamentally shaped modern infrastructures and forms of life. What forms of political and social power are created through fossil fuel industries? How have fossil fuels shaped modern societies, their economic models, governmental regimes, everyday lives? How have they contributed to uneven global geographies rooted in colonialism and capitalism? What kinds of transitions to post-carbon futures are possible?

Bringing together approaches from history, anthropology, political ecology, and geography, we seek to expand the field of oil studies beyond established narratives, geographies, and disciplinary boundaries, amplifying perspectives from the Global South and other sites of extraction and resistance.

 

🔗 Free registration here

📎 Download full programme (PDF)

 

 

Programme:

 

Every fortnight we will meet online to discuss an article or book chapter circulated in advance. The sessions will start with a 20–30 minute presentation, followed by discussion. The sessions will take place on Mondays at 2PM.

We will explore key concepts such as petro-culture, carbon democracy, extractivism, fossil capital, energy regimes, and transition imaginaries, examining how energy dependence shapes modern subjectivities, infrastructures, economies, and ecological futures. The texts will be shared with participants in advance.

Everyone is welcome.

To register, please fill out the online form. After registering you will receive the readings and access information ahead of each session.

For more information, please write to unearthingpetromodernity@proton.me.

 

 

30 March  |  Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. Selected chapter TBA (Verso, 2011)
Davide Scarso (CIUHCT — FCT NOVA)
Focus: How fossil fuels structured democratic politics, labour power and modern governance

13 April  |  Adam Hanieh, “Petrochemical Empire: The Geo-Politics of Fossil-Fuelled Production“ New Left Review (139)
Ricardo Noronha (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Global production networks, the Gulf region and the restructuring of capitalism through petrochemicals

27 April  |  Carola Hein (ed.), Oil Spaces: Exploring the Global Petroleumscape. Chapter 8: Peyerl, D. “Building Brazil’s Petroleumscape on Land and Sea: Infrastructure, Expertise, and Technology” (Routledge, 2022)
Henrique Oliveira (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Infrastructure, territorial development and the spatial materiality of oil

11 May  |  Stephanie LeMenager, Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century. Selected chapter TBA (Oxford University Pres, 2014)
Raquel Ribeiro (CHAM — NOVA FCSH)
Focus: Oil, media, culture, and everyday life in twentieth-century society

25 May  |  Appel, Mason & Watts (Eds.), Subterranean Estates: Life Worlds of Oil and Gas. Introduction: “Oil Talk” (Cornell University Press, 2015)
Amedeo Policante (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Anthropological and political-economic perspectives on oil extraction and everyday life

8 June  |  Alice Mah, Petrochemical Planet: Multiscalar Battles of Industrial Transformation. Chapter 2: “Enduring Toxic Injustice and Fenceline Mobilizations” (Duke University Press, 2023)
João Pedro Santos (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Environmental justice, pollution, and grassroots activism around petrochemical industries

22 June  |  Chelsea Schields, Offshore Attachments: Oil and Intimacy in the Caribbean. Introduction and Chapter 1. “Crude Bargains” (University of California Press, 2023)
Anita Buhin (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Oil economies, intimacy, and social relations in offshore extraction zones

6 July  |  Tim Di Muzio & Matt Dow, “Global capitalism and oil“ in Handbook on Oil and International Relations (Edward Elgar Publishing , 2022)
Davide Scarso (CIUHCT — FCT NOVA), Amedeo Policante & Ricardo Noronha (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Oil in international relations, financialization and the structure of global capitalism

 

 

Organisation:

Davide Scarso (CIUHCT — FCT NOVA)
Amedeo Policante (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Ricardo Noronha (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)

 

 

Conference of the International Society for Luso-Hispanic Humour Studies that underlines the importance of humour as an intellectual and cultural tool capable of restoring complexity to the human experience.

 

Laughter Strikes Back. Humour in a World Turned Upside Down

XXII Conference of the International Society for Luso-Hispanic Humour Studies (ISLHHS)

 

Following the conferences of Paris in 2022, with the question Humor in crisis?, and Lille in 2024, under the provocation The end of humour?, the XXII Conference of the ISLHHS proposes a significant inflection in the thematic path of recent years. The 2026 edition aims to assert that humour has not only resisted the multiple crises that have marked contemporary times, but remains active, relevant and in constant renewal. Under the title Laughter Strikes Back. Humour in a World Turned Upside Down, the conference assumes that laughter continues to represent a decisive resource for lucidity and criticism in contexts of instability and disorder. This proposal is configured as an ironic and reflective pause, an attempt to catch one’s breath and reaffirm the vitality of
humor as a form of resistance. Laughter, in this context, is equivalent to a gesture of symbolic resilience in face of the seriousness of the events that are currently taking place.

The event’s program will include contributions from researchers from the most diverse areas of knowledge, such as History, Literature, Linguistics, Graphic Arts, Law, Sociology, Psychology, Education, Anthropology, Philosophy or Communication, with the aim of examining the multiple languages and supports in which humour manifests itself and operates as a force for destabilising hegemonic discourses, challenging fanaticism and reactivating critical thinking. In a global scenario often described as chaotic and fragmented, humour remains an active form of reading and intervention. Considering this, the XXII Conference underlines the importance of humour as an intellectual and cultural tool capable of restoring complexity to the human experience.

Writer and researcher Rui Zink will be a keynote speaker.

 

The 2026 ISLHHS Conference will be held in the Almada Negreiros College (CAN) of the NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities, in the centre of Lisbon. The conference will take place over three days (Wednesday, 3 June through Friday, 5 June). The following day, Saturday, 6 June, will be dedicated to a social program to be announced. The conference will include an opening reception, coffee breaks, the conference dinner and comedy night.

 

Attendance of the conference (live or online) is open to members of the ISLHHS.

At the end of the conference will be announced the mode of publication of a selection of papers presented (selected according to the process of evaluation of double blind peer review)

Contact:
If you need more information on the conference, please send an email to xxiicongressohumor@gmail.com

 

Organising Committee

 

João Pedro Ferreira, CHAM, vice-president ISLHHS
Paulo Jorge Fernandes, IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST
Thaís Leão Vieira, UFMT
Dorothée Chouitem, Sorbonne Université

 

 

Research seminar that seeks to expand the field of oil studies beyond established narratives, geographies, and disciplinary boundaries, amplifying perspectives from the Global South and other sites of extraction and resistance.

 

Mind the Gap III:

Unearthing Petromodernity: Oil Studies in the Anthropocene

Online Research Seminar

 

The rise of fossil fuels has been central to the political, economic, cultural, and material transformations of the past two centuries, yet the forms of power, knowledge, and life enabled by carbon energy often remain analytically invisible. As we confront the converging crises of the Anthropocene, the need to rethink the centrality of fossil fuels to modern life has never been more urgent.

At a moment when toxic landscapes, resource frontiers, and environmental inequality reveal the uneven geographies of fossil modernity, the humanities and social sciences are reorienting analytical attention toward the energetic foundations of modern life. From pipelines and refineries to plastics and everyday petrochemical products, the material properties of oil have fundamentally shaped modern infrastructures and forms of life. What forms of political and social power are created through fossil fuel industries? How have fossil fuels shaped modern societies, their economic models, governmental regimes, everyday lives? How have they contributed to uneven global geographies rooted in colonialism and capitalism? What kinds of transitions to post-carbon futures are possible?

Bringing together approaches from history, anthropology, political ecology, and geography, we seek to expand the field of oil studies beyond established narratives, geographies, and disciplinary boundaries, amplifying perspectives from the Global South and other sites of extraction and resistance.

 

🔗 Free registration here

📎 Download full programme (PDF)

 

 

Programme:

 

Every fortnight we will meet online to discuss an article or book chapter circulated in advance. The sessions will start with a 20–30 minute presentation, followed by discussion. The sessions will take place on Mondays at 2PM.

We will explore key concepts such as petro-culture, carbon democracy, extractivism, fossil capital, energy regimes, and transition imaginaries, examining how energy dependence shapes modern subjectivities, infrastructures, economies, and ecological futures. The texts will be shared with participants in advance.

Everyone is welcome.

To register, please fill out the online form. After registering you will receive the readings and access information ahead of each session.

For more information, please write to unearthingpetromodernity@proton.me.

 

 

30 March  |  Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. Selected chapter TBA (Verso, 2011)
Davide Scarso (CIUHCT — FCT NOVA)
Focus: How fossil fuels structured democratic politics, labour power and modern governance

13 April  |  Adam Hanieh, “Petrochemical Empire: The Geo-Politics of Fossil-Fuelled Production“ New Left Review (139)
Ricardo Noronha (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Global production networks, the Gulf region and the restructuring of capitalism through petrochemicals

27 April  |  Carola Hein (ed.), Oil Spaces: Exploring the Global Petroleumscape. Chapter 8: Peyerl, D. “Building Brazil’s Petroleumscape on Land and Sea: Infrastructure, Expertise, and Technology” (Routledge, 2022)
Henrique Oliveira (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Infrastructure, territorial development and the spatial materiality of oil

11 May  |  Stephanie LeMenager, Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century. Selected chapter TBA (Oxford University Pres, 2014)
Raquel Ribeiro (CHAM — NOVA FCSH)
Focus: Oil, media, culture, and everyday life in twentieth-century society

25 May  |  Appel, Mason & Watts (Eds.), Subterranean Estates: Life Worlds of Oil and Gas. Introduction: “Oil Talk” (Cornell University Press, 2015)
Amedeo Policante (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Anthropological and political-economic perspectives on oil extraction and everyday life

8 June  |  Alice Mah, Petrochemical Planet: Multiscalar Battles of Industrial Transformation. Chapter 2: “Enduring Toxic Injustice and Fenceline Mobilizations” (Duke University Press, 2023)
João Pedro Santos (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Environmental justice, pollution, and grassroots activism around petrochemical industries

22 June  |  Chelsea Schields, Offshore Attachments: Oil and Intimacy in the Caribbean. Introduction and Chapter 1. “Crude Bargains” (University of California Press, 2023)
Anita Buhin (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Oil economies, intimacy, and social relations in offshore extraction zones

6 July  |  Tim Di Muzio & Matt Dow, “Global capitalism and oil“ in Handbook on Oil and International Relations (Edward Elgar Publishing , 2022)
Davide Scarso (CIUHCT — FCT NOVA), Amedeo Policante & Ricardo Noronha (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Oil in international relations, financialization and the structure of global capitalism

 

 

Organisation:

Davide Scarso (CIUHCT — FCT NOVA)
Amedeo Policante (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Ricardo Noronha (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)

 

 

Cristina Marques‘ thesis, “O Instituto Superior Técnico e a Internacionalização Escolas Universitárias – Política Científica e Práticas Laboratoriais (1945-1974)”, on the history of science and lab policies at Lisbon’s Instituto Superior Técnico,will be defended in a public examination at the University of Évora.

 

Examiner panel
Paulo Simões Rodrigues (University of Évora) — President
Alvaro Ribagorda (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) — Member
Ana Simões (University of Lisbon) — Member
Quintino Lopes (University of Évora) — Supervisor
Ângela Salgueiro (University of Évora) — Member
Luís Trindade (NOVA University Lisbon) — Member

 

Jacqueline S. Silva‘s thesis, “De Instituto de Antropologia a Museu Câmara Cascudo: Trajetórias científicas no Rio Grande do Norte, Brasil (1950-2010)”, on the history of the Câmara Cascudo Museum in Brazil, will be defended in a public examination at the University of Évora.

 

Examiner panel
Laurinda Abreu (University of Évora) — President
Elisabete Pereira (University of Évora) — Supervisor
Marilia Xavier Curry (University of São Paulo) — Member
Susana Simões Martins (NOVA University Lisbon) — Member
Luís Miguel Nunes Carolino (Iscte) — Member
Sara Albuquerque (University of Évora) — Member

 

Research seminar that seeks to expand the field of oil studies beyond established narratives, geographies, and disciplinary boundaries, amplifying perspectives from the Global South and other sites of extraction and resistance.

 

Mind the Gap III:

Unearthing Petromodernity: Oil Studies in the Anthropocene

Online Research Seminar

 

The rise of fossil fuels has been central to the political, economic, cultural, and material transformations of the past two centuries, yet the forms of power, knowledge, and life enabled by carbon energy often remain analytically invisible. As we confront the converging crises of the Anthropocene, the need to rethink the centrality of fossil fuels to modern life has never been more urgent.

At a moment when toxic landscapes, resource frontiers, and environmental inequality reveal the uneven geographies of fossil modernity, the humanities and social sciences are reorienting analytical attention toward the energetic foundations of modern life. From pipelines and refineries to plastics and everyday petrochemical products, the material properties of oil have fundamentally shaped modern infrastructures and forms of life. What forms of political and social power are created through fossil fuel industries? How have fossil fuels shaped modern societies, their economic models, governmental regimes, everyday lives? How have they contributed to uneven global geographies rooted in colonialism and capitalism? What kinds of transitions to post-carbon futures are possible?

Bringing together approaches from history, anthropology, political ecology, and geography, we seek to expand the field of oil studies beyond established narratives, geographies, and disciplinary boundaries, amplifying perspectives from the Global South and other sites of extraction and resistance.

 

🔗 Free registration here

📎 Download full programme (PDF)

 

 

Programme:

 

Every fortnight we will meet online to discuss an article or book chapter circulated in advance. The sessions will start with a 20–30 minute presentation, followed by discussion. The sessions will take place on Mondays at 2PM.

We will explore key concepts such as petro-culture, carbon democracy, extractivism, fossil capital, energy regimes, and transition imaginaries, examining how energy dependence shapes modern subjectivities, infrastructures, economies, and ecological futures. The texts will be shared with participants in advance.

Everyone is welcome.

To register, please fill out the online form. After registering you will receive the readings and access information ahead of each session.

For more information, please write to unearthingpetromodernity@proton.me.

 

 

30 March  |  Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. Selected chapter TBA (Verso, 2011)
Davide Scarso (CIUHCT — FCT NOVA)
Focus: How fossil fuels structured democratic politics, labour power and modern governance

13 April  |  Adam Hanieh, “Petrochemical Empire: The Geo-Politics of Fossil-Fuelled Production“ New Left Review (139)
Ricardo Noronha (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Global production networks, the Gulf region and the restructuring of capitalism through petrochemicals

27 April  |  Carola Hein (ed.), Oil Spaces: Exploring the Global Petroleumscape. Chapter 8: Peyerl, D. “Building Brazil’s Petroleumscape on Land and Sea: Infrastructure, Expertise, and Technology” (Routledge, 2022)
Henrique Oliveira (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Infrastructure, territorial development and the spatial materiality of oil

11 May  |  Stephanie LeMenager, Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century. Selected chapter TBA (Oxford University Pres, 2014)
Raquel Ribeiro (CHAM — NOVA FCSH)
Focus: Oil, media, culture, and everyday life in twentieth-century society

25 May  |  Appel, Mason & Watts (Eds.), Subterranean Estates: Life Worlds of Oil and Gas. Introduction: “Oil Talk” (Cornell University Press, 2015)
Amedeo Policante (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Anthropological and political-economic perspectives on oil extraction and everyday life

8 June  |  Alice Mah, Petrochemical Planet: Multiscalar Battles of Industrial Transformation. Chapter 2: “Enduring Toxic Injustice and Fenceline Mobilizations” (Duke University Press, 2023)
João Pedro Santos (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Environmental justice, pollution, and grassroots activism around petrochemical industries

22 June  |  Chelsea Schields, Offshore Attachments: Oil and Intimacy in the Caribbean. Introduction and Chapter 1. “Crude Bargains” (University of California Press, 2023)
Anita Buhin (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Oil economies, intimacy, and social relations in offshore extraction zones

6 July  |  Tim Di Muzio & Matt Dow, “Global capitalism and oil“ in Handbook on Oil and International Relations (Edward Elgar Publishing , 2022)
Davide Scarso (CIUHCT — FCT NOVA), Amedeo Policante & Ricardo Noronha (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Oil in international relations, financialization and the structure of global capitalism

 

 

Organisation:

Davide Scarso (CIUHCT — FCT NOVA)
Amedeo Policante (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Ricardo Noronha (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)

 

 

Two-day conference on the alter-lives of independence movements that explores the evolution and transformation of anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggles. Deadline: 13 February 2026

 

The Alter-lives of Independence Movements:

Frustrated Hopes, Renewed Utopias

 

Decades after formal decolonisation, anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism have remained a wellspring of inspiration and contestation. Studies about anticolonial thought, the 1955 Bandung Conference, and transcontinental solidarity movements have proliferated in academia and activist networks, providing the basis of theories and practices of resistance in contemporary times. Nevertheless, the ideas and the movements they inspired did not perish with the epoch that produced them. They evolved and acquired alternative lives in the period of nation-building and world-making, whether in extended or distorted forms. On the one hand, there were local and transnational efforts to sustain and enrich the revolutionary impulse through embracing the anticolonial spirit in various areas such as development, education, and diplomacy. As international institutions such as the UN welcome additional member states, Europeans and non-Europeans travelled to decolonised states like Algeria and Angola to learn and further cultivate ideas in building new societies. On the other hand, some dominant groups that took over the independent states capitalised on the anti-colonial pride to justify authoritarian and anti-democratic rule. Their utopian visions led to the systematic oppression of opposing forces and reproduced the hierarchical international state model. The fear of neocolonialism and disillusionment propelled both the former coloniser and colonised to reorganise their strategies and desires in the face of an emerging world order.

This two-day conference on the alter-lives of independence movements explores the evolution and transformation of anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggles. It focuses on the events and reflections about the early years of independence, a period of turbulent transition from colonial domination to self-governing nation-states, and of tumultuous beginnings of a new international order. We introduce the concept “alter-lives” to denote the process of altering imaginaries and practices that emerged during the colonial period in responding to uncertain futures, including the political uses of anticolonial memories and/or histories. It also refers to alternative relations forged between and among the former colonisers and colonised after independence. Thus, using “alter-lives” as a conceptual ground, this conference engages in the following questions: first, how have anticolonial thinking and practices evolved domestically and transnationally? Second, what were the structural and agential forces behind these evolutions? Third, how were anticolonial memories and histories politicised to achieve certain ends? Fourth, what difficulties did these agents face in realising their envisioned future? Lastly, how have alterations and alternatives affirmed and/or challenged the revolutionary ideas of the independence struggles?

 

 

Call for papers

 

We welcome theoretical and praxis-oriented proposals to gather scholars, activists, and artists from various disciplinary backgrounds and acquire a broad comparative perspective. Possible
areas include, but are not limited to:

• Transnational solidarities and resistance, such as North-South and South-South cooperation
• Nation-building
• Anticolonial thought and figures
• Diplomacy and international affairs
• Pedagogy and knowledge transmission
• Literary and artistic representations, such as documentaries, films, and novels
• Rhetorics of failure, frustrated political projects

 

Please submit your abstract (300 words max.) by 13 February 2026 to jiw.hopesandfears@gmail.com.

Decisions will be communicated by the first week of March 2026.

 

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

 

This event is organised as part of the Joint International Workshop “Hopes and Fears. Anti-colonial and Postcolonial Imaginaries in the Lusotopy and Beyond”, that gathers the Institute of Contemporary History — NOVA University Lisbon / University of Évora, the University of São Paulo, and the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul.

 

 

Research seminar that seeks to expand the field of oil studies beyond established narratives, geographies, and disciplinary boundaries, amplifying perspectives from the Global South and other sites of extraction and resistance.

 

Mind the Gap III:

Unearthing Petromodernity: Oil Studies in the Anthropocene

Online Research Seminar

 

The rise of fossil fuels has been central to the political, economic, cultural, and material transformations of the past two centuries, yet the forms of power, knowledge, and life enabled by carbon energy often remain analytically invisible. As we confront the converging crises of the Anthropocene, the need to rethink the centrality of fossil fuels to modern life has never been more urgent.

At a moment when toxic landscapes, resource frontiers, and environmental inequality reveal the uneven geographies of fossil modernity, the humanities and social sciences are reorienting analytical attention toward the energetic foundations of modern life. From pipelines and refineries to plastics and everyday petrochemical products, the material properties of oil have fundamentally shaped modern infrastructures and forms of life. What forms of political and social power are created through fossil fuel industries? How have fossil fuels shaped modern societies, their economic models, governmental regimes, everyday lives? How have they contributed to uneven global geographies rooted in colonialism and capitalism? What kinds of transitions to post-carbon futures are possible?

Bringing together approaches from history, anthropology, political ecology, and geography, we seek to expand the field of oil studies beyond established narratives, geographies, and disciplinary boundaries, amplifying perspectives from the Global South and other sites of extraction and resistance.

 

🔗 Free registration here

📎 Download full programme (PDF)

 

 

Programme:

 

Every fortnight we will meet online to discuss an article or book chapter circulated in advance. The sessions will start with a 20–30 minute presentation, followed by discussion. The sessions will take place on Mondays at 2PM.

We will explore key concepts such as petro-culture, carbon democracy, extractivism, fossil capital, energy regimes, and transition imaginaries, examining how energy dependence shapes modern subjectivities, infrastructures, economies, and ecological futures. The texts will be shared with participants in advance.

Everyone is welcome.

To register, please fill out the online form. After registering you will receive the readings and access information ahead of each session.

For more information, please write to unearthingpetromodernity@proton.me.

 

 

30 March  |  Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. Selected chapter TBA (Verso, 2011)
Davide Scarso (CIUHCT — FCT NOVA)
Focus: How fossil fuels structured democratic politics, labour power and modern governance

13 April  |  Adam Hanieh, “Petrochemical Empire: The Geo-Politics of Fossil-Fuelled Production“ New Left Review (139)
Ricardo Noronha (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Global production networks, the Gulf region and the restructuring of capitalism through petrochemicals

27 April  |  Carola Hein (ed.), Oil Spaces: Exploring the Global Petroleumscape. Chapter 8: Peyerl, D. “Building Brazil’s Petroleumscape on Land and Sea: Infrastructure, Expertise, and Technology” (Routledge, 2022)
Henrique Oliveira (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Infrastructure, territorial development and the spatial materiality of oil

11 May  |  Stephanie LeMenager, Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century. Selected chapter TBA (Oxford University Pres, 2014)
Raquel Ribeiro (CHAM — NOVA FCSH)
Focus: Oil, media, culture, and everyday life in twentieth-century society

25 May  |  Appel, Mason & Watts (Eds.), Subterranean Estates: Life Worlds of Oil and Gas. Introduction: “Oil Talk” (Cornell University Press, 2015)
Amedeo Policante (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Anthropological and political-economic perspectives on oil extraction and everyday life

8 June  |  Alice Mah, Petrochemical Planet: Multiscalar Battles of Industrial Transformation. Chapter 2: “Enduring Toxic Injustice and Fenceline Mobilizations” (Duke University Press, 2023)
João Pedro Santos (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Environmental justice, pollution, and grassroots activism around petrochemical industries

22 June  |  Chelsea Schields, Offshore Attachments: Oil and Intimacy in the Caribbean. Introduction and Chapter 1. “Crude Bargains” (University of California Press, 2023)
Anita Buhin (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Oil economies, intimacy, and social relations in offshore extraction zones

6 July  |  Tim Di Muzio & Matt Dow, “Global capitalism and oil“ in Handbook on Oil and International Relations (Edward Elgar Publishing , 2022)
Davide Scarso (CIUHCT — FCT NOVA), Amedeo Policante & Ricardo Noronha (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Focus: Oil in international relations, financialization and the structure of global capitalism

 

 

Organisation:

Davide Scarso (CIUHCT — FCT NOVA)
Amedeo Policante (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Ricardo Noronha (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)

 

 

Conference that seeks to challenge historical revisionism, amplify marginalised voices, and foster transnational dialogues on reconciliation, accountability, and restorative justice. Deadline: 30 November 7 December 2025 [new deadline]

 

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 7 December 2025 [new deadline]
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)

 

8th edition of the IWHSCR. It will place a special emphasis on experimental phonetics as an emerging field at the intersection of the humanities, medical sciences, and engineering, which underwent rapid development throughout the twentieth century. Deadline: 15 May 2026

 

8th International Workshop on the History of Speech Communication Research

(IWHSCR)

 

Following its launch in Dresden in 2015, and subsequent editions in Helsinki (2017), Vienna (2019), Prague (2021), Porto (2022), Budapest (2024), and Paris (2025), the 8th edition of the IWHSCR will be organised by members of the PHONLAB project (2022.06811.PTDC), in collaboration with the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra.

This edition will place a special emphasis on experimental phonetics as an emerging field at the intersection of the humanities, medical sciences, and engineering, which underwent rapid development throughout the twentieth century. Particular attention will be given to the role of institutions, internationally engaged scientific actors, and the creation of innovative scientific spaces, technologies, and techniques.

 

Keynote speakers:

Ana Simões is full professor of History of Science at the Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal, and member of the Centre for the History of Science and Technology (CIUHCT), which she (co-)coordinated from 2007 to 2019. She is the President-elect of the Division for the History of Science and Technology (2025–2029) – a division of the International Union for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IUHPST) – and was previously the President of the European Society for the History of Science (2018–2020). She has written extensively on the history of quantum chemistry, and aspects of history of science in Portugal, 18th to 20th centuries, including popularisation of science and science and the city, framed by a historiographical reflection on the circulation of science including non-central places. She is a founding member of the international network Science and Technology in the European Periphery. She is member of several national and EU projects, editorial boards, scientific advisory boards and scientific societies.

Bernd Möbius studied phonetics, linguistics and sociology at the University of Bonn, where he also received his PhD degree in 1992. He was a member of technical staff (senior researcher) at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ, from 1993 to 1998, and Assistant and Associate Professor at the University of Stuttgart from 1999 to 2011. After being Acting chair of Phonetics and Speech Communication at the University of Bonn (2007-2010), he was Full Professor of Phonetics and Phonology in the Department of Language Science and Technology at Saarland University from 2011 to 2025, where he is now a Senior Professor. A central theme of his research is to integrate phonetic knowledge in speech technology. He has worked extensively on text-to-speech synthesis and speech prosody, and recent work has focused on experimental methods and computational simulations to study aspects of speech production, perception and acquisition.

 

 

Call for papers

 

Contributions addressing this focus are welcome, as are submissions on any topics related to the historical aspects of speech communication research. Submissions must not exceed 10 pages (including references) and must follow the guidelines provided HERE. The proceedings will be published in the book series Studientexte zur Sprachkommunikation by TUDpress and will also be made available electronically in the ISCA archive.

Full paper submissions should be sent to the following email address: phonlab.project@gmail.com

 

Important dates:

Manuscript submission: 15 May 2026
Notification of acceptance: 1 June 2026
Registration: 30 June 2026
Revised manuscript submission: 1 July 2026

 

 

Organising Committee:

Albano Figueiredo, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Coimbra
Ângela Salgueiro, University of Évora and IHC / IN2PAST
Jürgen Trouvain, Saarland University
Quintino Lopes, University of Évora and IHC / IN2PAST

 

 

>> Official website <<

 

 

 

A conference aiming to foster historiographical reflection and a multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary debate that situates the Saint Joseph Hospital (Lisbon) within the international dynamics of medical and scientific knowledge and the transformations of European medicine. Deadline: 31 May 2026

 

250 anos do Hospital de São José:

Ciência, Saúde, Ensino e Inovação

 

Inaugurado em Abril de 1775, o Hospital Real de São José resultou da transferência do Hospital Real de Todos-os-Santos para o antigo Colégio de Santo Antão-o-Novo. Ao longo de dois séculos e meio de actividade clínica ininterrupta, esta instituição conheceu diferentes enquadramentos administrativos e designações – inicialmente como Hospital Real de São José e Anexos, constituindo posteriormente os Hospitais Civis de Lisboa, mais tarde Centro Hospitalar Universitário Lisboa Central, reflectindo as sucessivas reformas da assistência pública e da organização hospitalar em Portugal. Actualmente, integra a Unidade Local de Saúde de São José, assegurando a continuidade de uma missão assistencial, científica e formativa iniciada no século XVIII.

No contexto das comemorações do seu 250.º aniversário, o Hospital de São José (HSJ), em parceria com o Instituto de História Contemporânea (IHC) e com o laboratório associado IN2PAST, organiza o congresso 250 anos do Hospital de São José: Ciência, Saúde, Ensino e Inovação, a realizar-se nos dias 5 e 6 de Novembro de 2026, no Salão Nobre do Hospital de São José, em Lisboa.

Com papel ímpar na História da Medicina Portuguesa, o Hospital afirmou-se como uma instituição central na assistência hospitalar portuguesa, em estreita articulação com os grandes centros médicos europeus. Inserido nas redes internacionais de circulação do conhecimento, foi receptor e difusor de inovações científicas – nas práticas clínicas, nas técnicas médicas e cirúrgicas, na organização hospitalar e nas políticas de saúde pública, acompanhando as transformações científicas, políticas e socio-culturais dos séculos XVIII, XIX e XX, tendo desempenhando um papel determinante na modernização da medicina em Portugal.

A sua dimensão formativa esteve intimamente ligada à criação da Real Escola de Cirurgia de Lisboa (1825), à fundação da Escola Médico-Cirúrgica (1836) e, em 1911, com a Primeira República, à criação da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de Lisboa, sua herdeira directa. Ao longo deste percurso, o Hospital destacou-se como espaço de formação e de experimentação, contribuindo para o desenvolvimento e consolidação de diversas especialidades médicas e biomédicas, bem como para a definição do perfil das profissões da área da saúde.

A história institucional do Hospital, nas suas várias configurações administrativas, reflecte amplos processos de internacionalização científica, de circulação do conhecimento e de institucionalização de modelos médicos e hospitalares. A instituição afirmou-se, assim, como um verdadeiro laboratório clínico e pedagógico, acompanhando as transformações do ensino médico e contribuindo para a integração de Portugal nas redes transnacionais da ciência e da medicina modernas.

 

 

Chamada para comunicações

 

Este congresso propõe uma reflexão historiográfica e um debate multidisciplinar e transdisciplinar que enquadre o Hospital nas dinâmicas internacionais do conhecimento médico e científico e nas transformações da medicina europeia. Incentiva-se, em particular, o estudo dos processos de transferência e adaptação de inovações científicas e técnicas; a recepção de influências externas; o posicionamento institucional e dos seus actores; as práticas médicas; as reformas e regulamentos sanitários; e os modelos hospitalares associados à instituição ao longo do tempo.

Convida-se todos os interessados/as a submeter propostas no âmbito dos seguintes eixos temáticos:

• Circulação e transmissão do conhecimento médico e científico
• Redes transnacionais e intercâmbios científicos e profissionais
• Espaços e actores científicos
• Inovação científica e técnica na prática hospitalar
• Formação, desenvolvimento e consolidação de áreas científicas e especialidades médicas
• O Hospital de São José no contexto internacional
• Articulação entre dinâmicas locais e correntes internacionais da medicina
• Formação e ensino numa perspetiva transnacional
• Museus e Património Histórico Hospitalar

 

A selecção das propostas será realizada pelos membros da Comissão Científica, sendo orientada pelo objectivo de garantir o máximo de qualidade, relevância e originalidade dos trabalhos.

As propostas de comunicação devem ter até 300 palavras e ser acompanhadas de uma breve nota biográfica do/a/s autor/a/s (máximo de 150 palavras), com indicação da afiliação institucional e contactos.

As propostas devem ser submetidas através do formulário disponível NESTE LINK.

 

Calendário:

Data limite de submissão: 27 Abril 2026 31 Maio 2026
Notificação de aceitação: 29 Maio 2026 30 Junho 2026

 

 

Comissão Organizadora:

 

Alexandra Marques, IHC – Universidade de Évora / IN2PAST
Ângela Salgueiro, Universidade de Évora / IHC / IN2PAST
Carlos Boavida, ULS São José
Fátima Palmeiro, ULS São José
Quintino Lopes, Universidade de Évora / IHC / IN2PAST

 

>> Website Oficial <<

 

 

Aiming to raise a host of questions rather than provide the answers, the 4th Counter-Image unpacks the earth not as theme but rather as onto-episteme. Deadline: 25 May 2026

 

Counter-Image International Conference 2026

How to speak with(in) the earth? Situated knowledges, unnaming methods, and visions of the threshold

 

The question “How to speak with(in) the earth?” is not a metaphor but a political, ontological, and epistemic imperative in the face of ecological collapse, the exhaustion of anthropocentric frameworks, and the representational models of the colonial-capitalist regime and its paradigm of territorial expansion and occupation—the plantation, whose logic of extraction, objectification, and extinction persists (Le Petitcorps et al. 2023; Bastos 2020; Thomas 2019; Haraway 2015; Tsing 2015; McKittrick 2013; Mirzoeff 2011; Stoler 2008, 2016; Hartman 2007). The Posts—postcolonialism, postmodernism, posthumanism—we insist on using to make sense of a world yet to be overcome are being replaced by the prefix Geo (Pratt 2025, 2022; Coelho & Ponce de Léon 2025; Krieger 2022; Ray 2019, 2026; Latour 2018; Povinelli 2016). The “advent of the Geo,” Mary Louise Pratt (2025) points out, marks a shift in scale (from the global to the planetary), imaginary (from the political to the ecological), and temporality (from historical time to deep time—the geological). This shift implies questioning what we take for granted and adopting alternative ways of thinking and producing knowledge that Gabriela Milone and Franca Maccioni, in “The Land of Language, the Language of the Earth” (2025), have described as “geo-logy” (the language of the earth) and “geo-graphy” (the writing of the earth). This also entails “speaking with the earth” rather than “about the earth” and in terms of “similarity” rather than “difference”—a “work of imagination” and “experimentation.” Emphasising subjectivation rather than objectification (Kopenawa 2010); prioritising fusion rather than occupation (Krenak 2022).

“How to speak with(in) the earth” is therefore inseparable from the question of how the earth has been constituted as object, resource, and image—a point addressed by Ursula K. Le Guin in She Unnames Them (1985). This short story explores the colonial impulse to name and identify, creating artificial boundaries, while at the same time urging us to find ways to speak with other creatures. Speaking “with” or “as” rather than “about” the earth signals an epistemological shift, requiring a rethinking of its naming, mediation, and representation. What if the earth were not the referent of discourse but its condition? What if the possibility of speaking with/as the earth opened a space between the individual and the multiple, between situated territory and planetary totality? This dialectic is methodological: a practice of “unnaming”—of eroding the semantics of objectification, extractivism, and extinction. If the earth has been mapped, renamed, and fenced in (and private property created), it is also resistance, cosmoperception, and ritual.

The 4th Counter-Image unpacks the earth not as theme but rather as onto-episteme. It focuses on situated knowledges rooted in territories, bodies, and relations that thrive within the cracks of colonialism and capital, rather than the universal, logocentric language that separates subject from object. It challenges the anthropocentric semantics of positivist science and its fictitious objectivity to instead promote unnaming methods that suspend colonial taxonomies, while enabling the soil, the fossil, the animal, the plant, the stone, the tree, the river, the mountain, the lichen, and the fungus to reveal their unique and interconnected existences. It rejects the pseudo scientific “view from nowhere,” favouring visions from the threshold—those shaped from our grandmothers’ porches or at dusk/dawn in dialectical, incandescent images of impossible syntheses.

 

Keynote speakers:
Gabriela Milone and Franca Maccioni (Universidade Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina)
Felipe Milanez (Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil)

 

 

Call for papers

 

Aiming to raise a host of questions rather than provide the answers, the 4th Counter-Image asks: what does it mean to think with/as the earth rather than about it? Is it possible to translate the language of the earth, animals, plants, and minerals? Is “unnaming” a philosophical-aesthetic method? How the visions from the threshold suspend extractive regimes of representation? What kind of artistic practices resist, reconfigure, or disrupt colonial regimes over the land? How to foster forms of belonging, care, and reparation towards a post-extractivist world? Anchored in Portugal’s Southern region of the Algarve, but broadening its connections to other territories, we invite researchers, artists, activists, and essayists to submit proposals engaging with the following thematic axes::

1. Situated Knowledges
How and what does the earth remember? This thread welcomes works grounded in relational compositions and geo-subjectivities that challenge the “view from nowhere,” as well as uncertainty, failure, and contradiction, encouraging the connection between research and lived experience.

• “Terricidio” (Millán 2024) and buen vivir
• Artisanal epistemologies (Farago et al. 2025) and epistemologies of the South
• Decolonial, anti-extractivist, ecofeminist, queer, and trans ecologies
• “Exilic ecologies” (Marder 2023)
• Indigenous and Afro-diasporic cosmopolitics
• The baldio and the quilombo/quilombismo (B. Nascimento 1977, A. Nascimento 1980)
• “Insurgent Archivings” (Biehl 2022) and counter-cartographies
• Environmental struggles, their mourning, and multispecies justice
• Critique of Linnaean taxonomies and biopolitics
• Environmental histories, landscape politics, and “pyropolitics” (Marder 2020)

 

2. Unnaming Methods
If the act of naming is colonizing, how can unnaming promote relationality? This thread welcomes works on geo-semantics and methodological and pedagogical experiments that challenge extractivist and speciesist perspectives.

• Unnaming as a philosophical-aesthetic method
• Poetics of silence and deep listening
• Walking as method and “seeing with the whole body” (Cusicanqui 2015)
• Animal, mineral, and “fossil ontologies” (Castro 2023)
• Geo-aesthetics (Coelho & Ponce de Léon 2025; Krieger 2022; Ray 2019), including volcanic and so-called weed aesthetics
• “Liquid alliances” and aesthetics (Mendes & Garcia-Antón 2026)
• Narratives of relationality and multispecies methods
• “Contracolonizar” (Nêgo Bispo 2015)
• Art as a laboratory of thought (rather than representation)
• Animist cinema and anti-extractivist and anti-speciesist visual assemblages

 

3. Visions from the Threshold
How to inhabit the threshold and move between worlds? This thread welcomes forms that transcend the dualistic principles of the Plantationocene/Capitalocene–the geo-choreographies that broaden affinities and alliances.

• Epistemologies of the threshold
• “Dark ecology” (Morton 2016), deep time, and submerged temporalities
• Grassroots ecology
• Non-human agency and the redistribution of the sensible
• “Ruins of the Plantationocene/Capitalocene” (Tsing 2015).
• “Interstitial zones” (Gomez-Barris 2017) and riverside and seaside knowledges
• Dialectical images (Benjamin 1940) and “image-skins” (Kopenawa 2010)
• “Ch’ixi” visions (Cusicanqui 2015)
• “Affective alliances” (Krenak 2022)
• “Florestania” (Krenak 2022) and “struggling with the forest” (Milanez 2024

 

Important dates:

25 May | Proposal submission
30 June | Notification of acceptance
18-20 November | Conference

Submission formats:

1. Papers (theoretical or empirical research): 300-word abstract
2. Artistic interventions (performances, poetry readings): 300-word description
3. Discussion circles, workshops, listening walks, affective cartographies: 300-word description

Abstracts (in English, Portuguese or Spanish) should be submitted along with a short bio (100 words) to: counterimageconference@fcsh.unl.pt

 

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

 

 

Organising Committee

 

Inês Beleza Barreiros (ICNOVA — NOVA FCSH / CIAC — University of Algarve)
Liliana Coutinho (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Maria do Carmo Piçarra (ICNOVA — NOVA FCSH)
Salomé Lopes Coelho (ICON — Utrecht University / ICNOVA — NOVA FCSH)
Sílvia Leiria Viegas (CIAC — University of Algarve)
Teresa Castro (IRCAV — Sorbonne Nouvelle / ICNOVA — NOVA FCSH)
Teresa Mendes Flores (ICNOVA — NOVA FCSH)

 

 

Scientific Committee

 

Ana Lúcia Marsillac (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina)
Bruno Mendes da Silva (CIAC, University of Algarve)
Cristiana Bastos (Instituto de Ciências Sociais)
Filippo Di Tomasi (ICNOVA — NOVA FCSH)
Iacã Macerata (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina)
Isabel Stein (ICNOVA — NOVA FCSH)
Leila Lehnen (Brown University)
Luís Trindade (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Margarida Brito Alves (IHA — NOVA FCSH)
Margarida Mendes (ICNOVA — NOVA FCSH)
María Gloria Robalino (Washington University St. Louis)
Maria Teresa Cruz (ICNOVA — NOVA FCSH)
Marita Sturken (New York University)
Maura Castanheira Grimaldi (ICNOVA — NOVA FCSH)
Mirian Nogueira Tavares (CIAC — University of Algarve)
Patrícia Martins Marcos (University of Oklahoma)
Patrícia Martinho Ferreira (Brown University)
Paulo Nuno Vicente (ICNOVA — NOVA FCSH)
Rui Gomes Coelho (Durham University)
Susanne Knittel (ICON — Utrecht University)

 

 

 

 

 

Meeting that seeks to open up reflection on a variety of subjects and themes related to the history of Portuguese migration during the interwar period. Deadline: 30 April 2026

 

Between wars and peace:

New Perspectives and Challenges of Portuguese Migration (1914-1945)

 

This event aims to bring together scholars working on the history of Portuguese migration during the interwar period. Its objective is to create a space for dialogue and scientific debate based on a multidirectional and multi-geographical perspective, in order to highlight the contributions and new research approaches toward which the scholarly community has more recently turned.

The nineteenth century and the period of the Trente Glorieuses have been privileged in studies of Portuguese migration. Whether focusing on migration to transatlantic or European countries, some works have addressed the interwar period; however, these remain fragmentary and, in some cases, outdated. It is therefore necessary to gain a better understanding of the characteristics of this migration, its stakes, and its impacts, within a national and international political context marked by profound change.

The interwar period constitutes a key moment in the history of Portuguese migration. It is characterised by a renewal and intensification of international migratory movements in the aftermath of the First World War; by the strong attraction exerted on migrant workers by transatlantic countries such as the United States or Brazil; but also by the opening of new destinations, such as France, which from the 1960s onward would become the main country of settlement for Portuguese migrants. This period also corresponds to a moment when measures aimed at strengthening control over migrants’ entry and presence were implemented, particularly in the context of the 1929 economic crisis and the Great Depression.

The event thus seeks to open up reflection on a variety of subjects and themes related to the history of Portuguese migration, mobilizing both multidisciplinary approaches and perspectives that make it possible to understand and critically examine this phenomenon. It is addressed to researchers working on Portuguese migration in both transatlantic and European contexts

 

 

Call for papers

 

The topics that may be addressed include:

• World Wars and Portuguese migration
• Exile, opposition, and resistance
• Reception and support networks
• Political and trade-union engagement
• Irregular emigration
• Migration, migrants, and police and administrative management
• Emigration and immigration policies
• Policies and practices of exclusion
• Migrant agency
• Community structures
• Health and Portuguese migration
• Migration, voluntary and forced returns
• Migration and the press
• Memory of Portuguese migration
• Any other topic deemed to be of scientific interest for understanding the history of Portuguese migration during the interwar period.

 

Submission of proposals

Paper proposals should include an abstract (up to 250 words), a title, the author’s name, institutional affiliation, and a short biographical note (up to 200 words). Proposals in French, English, and Portuguese are accepted.

Proposals should be sent to the email address histmigport@gmail.com by 30 April 2026.

 

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

 

 

Organisation

 

Cristina Clímaco (Université Paris 8 / LER)
Yvette dos Santos (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)

 

 

Scientific Committee

 

Alberto Pena Rodriguez (Universidad de Vigo)
Armelle Enders (Université Paris 8 / IFG Lab)
Delphine Diaz (Université de Reims / CERHIC / IUF)
Érica Sarmiento (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro)
Heloisa Paulo (University of Coimbra)
Irene dos Santos (CNRS / URMIS)
Marcelo Borges (Dickinson College, Carlisle)
Marie-Christine Volovitch Tavares (CERMI)
Philippe Rygiel (ENS Lyon / INRIA)
Sónia Ferreira (CRIA — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Sylvie Aprile (ISP)
Victor Pereira (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)

 

 

Tenth edition of the congress, which aims to provide a forum for debate, sharing and critical discussion on local history as a field of historical study. Deadline: 31 July 2026

 

X Congresso de História Local

História local hoje: escalas, territórios, arquivos, comunidades e governação

 

 

O X Congresso de História Local constitui um marco relevante no percurso de uma iniciativa que, ao longo de mais de dez anos, se afirmou como espaço de referência para o debate historiográfico em torno da história local. Reunindo investigadores/as de diferentes gerações, filiações institucionais e áreas de especialidade, este encontro tem dado expressão à vitalidade de um campo em permanente renovação, como o demonstram as dezenas de comunicações apresentadas nas edições anteriores, a pluralidade de temas abordados e a diversidade de perspetivas metodológicas e epistemológicas mobilizadas. A sua continuidade, bem como o envolvimento de diferentes instituições organizadoras e de comissões científicas de reconhecida qualidade, confirmam a consolidação de uma comunidade de investigação atenta aos desafios conceptuais, documentais e públicos da história local.

A história local vive hoje um momento de renovação historiográfica particularmente estimulante. O estudo do local afirma-se como um observatório privilegiado para compreender processos históricos amplos, articular escalas de análise, testar interpretações consolidadas e aprofundar o conhecimento sobre fenómenos sociais, políticos, económicos, culturais e ambientais tal como se inscrevem em territórios, instituições e experiências situadas. Nesta perspectiva, a história local ganha especial relevância enquanto campo capaz de pôr em relação o micro, o regional, o nacional, o imperial e o global, contribuindo para uma historiografia mais densa, mais relacional e mais atenta à pluralidade dos contextos.

Neste quadro, a história local dialoga de forma cada vez mais intensa com a micro-história, a história regional, a história urbana e rural, a história ambiental, a história pública, a história oral, os estudos do património, as humanidades digitais e as abordagens comparativas e conectadas. O estudo de comunidades, paisagens, redes, poderes, arquivos, bibliotecas, memórias, conflitos, práticas de governação e usos públicos do passado permite compreender o local como lugar de densidade analítica, mediação social e produção crítica de conhecimento.

Este processo convida igualmente a repensar os suportes e as infraestruturas da investigação. Arquivos, bibliotecas, centros de documentação, colecções locais, repositórios digitais e redes locais de memória e conhecimento assumem um papel crescente na preservação, organização, mediação e democratização do saber histórico. A expansão da história oral, da participação comunitária, dos arquivos comunitários, da cartografia digital e das humanidades espaciais tem, por seu turno, vindo a alargar os métodos, os públicos e os modos de circulação da história local.

O X Congresso de História Local, a realizar no Porto, entre 24 e 26 de Novembro de 2026, na Biblioteca Municipal Almeida Garrett, pretende acompanhar e estimular esta renovação.

 

 

 

---

 

Chamada para comunicações

 

Dando continuidade às edições anteriores, o congresso propõe-se como espaço de debate, partilha e problematização em torno da história local enquanto campo historiográfico, prática de investigação e forma de mediação entre conhecimento académico, comunidades e território. Acolherá, por isso, contributos de natureza empírica, teórica e metodológica, bem como propostas que promovam o diálogo entre investigação histórica, ensino, história oral, arquivos, bibliotecas, património e participação pública.

A edição de 2026 reveste-se ainda de particular significado por coincidir com os 50 anos das primeiras eleições autárquicas democráticas. Esta efeméride convida a revisitar o poder local em democracia, a formação e consolidação das autarquias, o papel dos municípios e das freguesias, os processos de participação e representação, as transformações da administração local e as mudanças ocorridas nos territórios ao longo de meio século. Ao mesmo tempo, oferece uma oportunidade para analisar, à escala local, os modos concretos de construção da democracia, os seus ritmos, tensões, assimetrias e legados.

Convidam-se, assim, historiadores/as, investigadores/as, professores/as, estudantes, profissionais de arquivos, bibliotecas e património, bem como demais estudiosos/as, a submeter propostas de comunicação no amplo domínio da história local. Serão particularmente bem-vindas propostas que contribuam para aprofundar o lugar da história local na historiografia contemporânea, os seus instrumentos conceptuais, os seus desafios metodológicos e as suas articulações com outras escalas, campos e práticas de investigação.

• Teoria, historiografia, epistemologia e metodologias da história local
• História local entre o micro, o regional, o nacional, o imperial e o global
• Circulações, redes, conexões e abordagens comparativas, conectadas ou translocais
• Território, paisagem, ambiente, recursos e transformações socio-ecológicas
• História rural, urbana e regional em perspetiva renovada
• Municípios, freguesias, poder local, administração e governação territorial
• 50 anos das eleições autárquicas democráticas: participação, representação, cidadania e transformação local
• Comunidades, identidades, pertenças, memória e património
• História oral, testemunho, memória e conhecimento situado
• Arquivos, bibliotecas, centros de documentação, coleções locais e redes territoriais de conhecimento
• História pública, mediação cultural, participação comunitária e usos públicos do passado local
• Elites, sociabilidades, instituições, associativismo e trajetórias locais
• Trabalho, economia, mobilidades, infraestruturas, desigualdades e conflito social
• Violência política, resistência, repressão e democratização à escala local
• Perspetivas decoloniais, histórias situadas e crítica das narrativas hegemónicas
• Ferramentas digitais, cartografia histórica, SIG, bases de dados e humanidades espaciais

 

O congresso acolherá com particular interesse propostas que articulem investigação histórica rigorosa com reflexão conceptual, inovação metodológica e atenção às formas contemporâneas de preservação, circulação e uso do conhecimento histórico.

Serão igualmente valorizadas comunicações que explorem o potencial da história local para compreender problemas mais vastos, produzir conhecimento socialmente relevante e reforçar a ligação entre investigação, território e cidadania.

Painel para jovens investigadores: à semelhança das edições anteriores, o congresso pretende também incentivar a participação de estudantes em início de percurso académico, promovendo a sua integração em contextos de discussão científica exigentes e formativos.

 

Envio de propostas

Todas as propostas deverão ser submetidas através do formulário disponível 🔗neste link. até 31 de Julho de 2026.

 

Inscrições

A inscrição no congresso é individual e gratuita e deverá ser feita através do formulário disponível 🔗neste link até ao dia 23 de Novembro de 2026.

 

Calendarização

Submissão de propostas: até 31 de Julho de 2026
Notificação de aceitação de propostas: 20 de Setembro de 2026
Divulgação do Programa: 20 de Setembro de 2026
Prazo para inscrições: até 23 de Novembro de 2026
Congresso: 24 a 26 de Novembro de 2026

 

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)
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)

 

 

 

 

The aim of the fourth Karl Marx Congress is to analyse the crisis of neoliberal capitalism (1980s – first quarter of the 21st century). Deadline: 30 June 2026

 

 

4th Karl Marx Congress

The Crisis of Neoliberal Capitalism and Necropolitics

 

 

The 4th Karl Marx Congress will take place on 22 and 23 January 2027 at NOVA FCSH (Av. de Berna campus, Lisbon, Portugal), organised by the following institutions: Centre for Social Studies (CES), University of Coimbra; CULTRA — Association of Political Economy; Institute of Contemporary History (IHC), NOVA University Lisbon; Institute of Sociology, University of Porto; STEXEU project — The Constitutional Road to Dictatorship (ERC Grant 101163723).

The aim of the congress is to analyse the crisis of neoliberal capitalism (1980s – first quarter of the 21st century) from a dual perspective: that of historical analysis and that of theoretical debate of the crisis in its various dimensions, along with the study of related experiences of social, political, or cultural activism.

To this end, the congress will be organised around plenary sessions (keynote speeches) and the following seven thematic sections:

• Section I: The economic and financial crisis of neoliberal capitalism (nature and characteristics of the crisis of late capitalism; rates of profit and accumulation; centre and periphery; technological revolution and technocracies; financialisation; cryptocurrencies; the privatisation offensive; old and new forms of surplus value extraction and related issues)
• Section II: Politics, hyperpolitics and necropolitics (crisis of legitimacy/representativeness of liberal systems; the capitulation of liberalism; the decline of the two-party system between social democracy and liberal and conservative forces; the neo-fascist threat and its characteristics in the current era; the radicalisation of the traditional right; Trumpism and related phenomena; struggles and impasses of the emancipatory left)
• Section III: Social transformations and struggles (structural and behavioural changes within the working classes, segmentation, precarisation, unionisation; the new balance of power in the world of work: the 2025–26 labour reform in Portugal within the international context of the counter-reform of labour rights; migrant labour; migration, the international division of labour and racialised regimes of accumulation; fear and insecurity among the middle and marginalised classes; processes of pauperisation; changes within the ruling classes, technoligarchy; the new role of algorithmic manipulation and social media; heteronormativity and queer Marxism; experiences of struggle in the workplace, housing, healthcare, education, etc.).
• Section IV: Late capitalism, ecological and environmental disaster, and ecosocialism (the environmental policies of capitalism; the ecological and environmental crisis and its evolution; growth and degrowth, the Anthropocene and the Capitalocene, extractivism; experiences of environmental activism in its various forms and expressions)
• Section V: Feminisms, emancipation and social reproduction (patriarchy and the situation of women in society, politics and the culture of late capitalism; reproductive labour and struggles surrounding social reproduction; LGBTQIA+ rights and discrimination, overexploitation, violence, male power: coexistence, impunity, political conquests, the current situation; neo-fascism, male chauvinism, anti-feminism; feminist struggles; the emancipatory left and the feminist movement; the various currents and expressions of contemporary feminisms).
• Section VI: Culture and cultural counter-revolution (the role of cultural counter-revolution in the emergence of the new neo-fascist far right; the various dimensions of conservative and fascist cultural revisionism: in history, memory, politics, social discourse, ideology; the new role of democratic and mass culture in the transformative understanding of present realities).
• Section VII: Imperialism, war and genocide (new and old forms of imperialism; wars of aggression and imperial rivalry: Ukraine, Palestine, Lebanon, Iran; the collapse of multilateralism and international law; the unpunished return of gunboat diplomacy and the law of the jungle; Trumpism and Latin America: Cuba, Venezuela and similar cases; the arms race; the threat of World War III; the struggles against imperial necropolitics).

 

 

Call for papers

 

 

Proposals for papers for the congress will only be considered by the Scientific Committee under the following conditions:

a) Their content must fall within the thematic scope of the seven sections of the congress;
b) They must take the form of abstracts – in Portuguese or English – of no more than 2,000 characters, including a very brief identifying note and the authors’ short bio;
c) They must be submitted using this online form.

All proposals for papers must be received by 30 June 2026.

Proposals will be assessed by the congress’ Scientific Committee and proposers will be notified of the outcome by 30 September 2026. FCSH’s room capacity may limit the number of paper proposals that can be accepted.

The 4th Karl Marx Congress is open to the public and admission is free.

 

 

Organising Committee

 

Arturo Zoffmann Rodriguez, IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST
Fernando Rosas, IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST / CULTRA
Giulia Strippoli, IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST
Jonas Van Vossole, CES — University of Coimbra
José Soeiro, Instituto de Sociologia — FLUP
Luís Trindade, IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST
Manuel Loff, FLUP / IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST
Mariana Mortágua, DINÂMIA’CET — Iscte

 

 

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

 

 

8th edition of the IWHSCR. It will place a special emphasis on experimental phonetics as an emerging field at the intersection of the humanities, medical sciences, and engineering, which underwent rapid development throughout the twentieth century. Deadline: 15 May 2026

 

8th International Workshop on the History of Speech Communication Research

(IWHSCR)

 

Following its launch in Dresden in 2015, and subsequent editions in Helsinki (2017), Vienna (2019), Prague (2021), Porto (2022), Budapest (2024), and Paris (2025), the 8th edition of the IWHSCR will be organised by members of the PHONLAB project (2022.06811.PTDC), in collaboration with the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra.

This edition will place a special emphasis on experimental phonetics as an emerging field at the intersection of the humanities, medical sciences, and engineering, which underwent rapid development throughout the twentieth century. Particular attention will be given to the role of institutions, internationally engaged scientific actors, and the creation of innovative scientific spaces, technologies, and techniques.

 

Keynote speakers:

Ana Simões is full professor of History of Science at the Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal, and member of the Centre for the History of Science and Technology (CIUHCT), which she (co-)coordinated from 2007 to 2019. She is the President-elect of the Division for the History of Science and Technology (2025–2029) – a division of the International Union for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IUHPST) – and was previously the President of the European Society for the History of Science (2018–2020). She has written extensively on the history of quantum chemistry, and aspects of history of science in Portugal, 18th to 20th centuries, including popularisation of science and science and the city, framed by a historiographical reflection on the circulation of science including non-central places. She is a founding member of the international network Science and Technology in the European Periphery. She is member of several national and EU projects, editorial boards, scientific advisory boards and scientific societies.

Bernd Möbius studied phonetics, linguistics and sociology at the University of Bonn, where he also received his PhD degree in 1992. He was a member of technical staff (senior researcher) at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ, from 1993 to 1998, and Assistant and Associate Professor at the University of Stuttgart from 1999 to 2011. After being Acting chair of Phonetics and Speech Communication at the University of Bonn (2007-2010), he was Full Professor of Phonetics and Phonology in the Department of Language Science and Technology at Saarland University from 2011 to 2025, where he is now a Senior Professor. A central theme of his research is to integrate phonetic knowledge in speech technology. He has worked extensively on text-to-speech synthesis and speech prosody, and recent work has focused on experimental methods and computational simulations to study aspects of speech production, perception and acquisition.

 

 

Call for papers

 

Contributions addressing this focus are welcome, as are submissions on any topics related to the historical aspects of speech communication research. Submissions must not exceed 10 pages (including references) and must follow the guidelines provided HERE. The proceedings will be published in the book series Studientexte zur Sprachkommunikation by TUDpress and will also be made available electronically in the ISCA archive.

Full paper submissions should be sent to the following email address: phonlab.project@gmail.com

 

Important dates:

Manuscript submission: 15 May 2026
Notification of acceptance: 1 June 2026
Registration: 30 June 2026
Revised manuscript submission: 1 July 2026

 

 

Organising Committee:

Albano Figueiredo, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Coimbra
Ângela Salgueiro, University of Évora and IHC / IN2PAST
Jürgen Trouvain, Saarland University
Quintino Lopes, University of Évora and IHC / IN2PAST

 

 

>> Official website <<

 

 

 

A conference aiming to foster historiographical reflection and a multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary debate that situates the Saint Joseph Hospital (Lisbon) within the international dynamics of medical and scientific knowledge and the transformations of European medicine. Deadline: 31 May 2026

 

250 anos do Hospital de São José:

Ciência, Saúde, Ensino e Inovação

 

Inaugurado em Abril de 1775, o Hospital Real de São José resultou da transferência do Hospital Real de Todos-os-Santos para o antigo Colégio de Santo Antão-o-Novo. Ao longo de dois séculos e meio de actividade clínica ininterrupta, esta instituição conheceu diferentes enquadramentos administrativos e designações – inicialmente como Hospital Real de São José e Anexos, constituindo posteriormente os Hospitais Civis de Lisboa, mais tarde Centro Hospitalar Universitário Lisboa Central, reflectindo as sucessivas reformas da assistência pública e da organização hospitalar em Portugal. Actualmente, integra a Unidade Local de Saúde de São José, assegurando a continuidade de uma missão assistencial, científica e formativa iniciada no século XVIII.

No contexto das comemorações do seu 250.º aniversário, o Hospital de São José (HSJ), em parceria com o Instituto de História Contemporânea (IHC) e com o laboratório associado IN2PAST, organiza o congresso 250 anos do Hospital de São José: Ciência, Saúde, Ensino e Inovação, a realizar-se nos dias 5 e 6 de Novembro de 2026, no Salão Nobre do Hospital de São José, em Lisboa.

Com papel ímpar na História da Medicina Portuguesa, o Hospital afirmou-se como uma instituição central na assistência hospitalar portuguesa, em estreita articulação com os grandes centros médicos europeus. Inserido nas redes internacionais de circulação do conhecimento, foi receptor e difusor de inovações científicas – nas práticas clínicas, nas técnicas médicas e cirúrgicas, na organização hospitalar e nas políticas de saúde pública, acompanhando as transformações científicas, políticas e socio-culturais dos séculos XVIII, XIX e XX, tendo desempenhando um papel determinante na modernização da medicina em Portugal.

A sua dimensão formativa esteve intimamente ligada à criação da Real Escola de Cirurgia de Lisboa (1825), à fundação da Escola Médico-Cirúrgica (1836) e, em 1911, com a Primeira República, à criação da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de Lisboa, sua herdeira directa. Ao longo deste percurso, o Hospital destacou-se como espaço de formação e de experimentação, contribuindo para o desenvolvimento e consolidação de diversas especialidades médicas e biomédicas, bem como para a definição do perfil das profissões da área da saúde.

A história institucional do Hospital, nas suas várias configurações administrativas, reflecte amplos processos de internacionalização científica, de circulação do conhecimento e de institucionalização de modelos médicos e hospitalares. A instituição afirmou-se, assim, como um verdadeiro laboratório clínico e pedagógico, acompanhando as transformações do ensino médico e contribuindo para a integração de Portugal nas redes transnacionais da ciência e da medicina modernas.

 

 

Chamada para comunicações

 

Este congresso propõe uma reflexão historiográfica e um debate multidisciplinar e transdisciplinar que enquadre o Hospital nas dinâmicas internacionais do conhecimento médico e científico e nas transformações da medicina europeia. Incentiva-se, em particular, o estudo dos processos de transferência e adaptação de inovações científicas e técnicas; a recepção de influências externas; o posicionamento institucional e dos seus actores; as práticas médicas; as reformas e regulamentos sanitários; e os modelos hospitalares associados à instituição ao longo do tempo.

Convida-se todos os interessados/as a submeter propostas no âmbito dos seguintes eixos temáticos:

• Circulação e transmissão do conhecimento médico e científico
• Redes transnacionais e intercâmbios científicos e profissionais
• Espaços e actores científicos
• Inovação científica e técnica na prática hospitalar
• Formação, desenvolvimento e consolidação de áreas científicas e especialidades médicas
• O Hospital de São José no contexto internacional
• Articulação entre dinâmicas locais e correntes internacionais da medicina
• Formação e ensino numa perspetiva transnacional
• Museus e Património Histórico Hospitalar

 

A selecção das propostas será realizada pelos membros da Comissão Científica, sendo orientada pelo objectivo de garantir o máximo de qualidade, relevância e originalidade dos trabalhos.

As propostas de comunicação devem ter até 300 palavras e ser acompanhadas de uma breve nota biográfica do/a/s autor/a/s (máximo de 150 palavras), com indicação da afiliação institucional e contactos.

As propostas devem ser submetidas através do formulário disponível NESTE LINK.

 

Calendário:

Data limite de submissão: 27 Abril 2026 31 Maio 2026
Notificação de aceitação: 29 Maio 2026 30 Junho 2026

 

 

Comissão Organizadora:

 

Alexandra Marques, IHC – Universidade de Évora / IN2PAST
Ângela Salgueiro, Universidade de Évora / IHC / IN2PAST
Carlos Boavida, ULS São José
Fátima Palmeiro, ULS São José
Quintino Lopes, Universidade de Évora / IHC / IN2PAST

 

>> Website Oficial <<

 

 

Aiming to raise a host of questions rather than provide the answers, the 4th Counter-Image unpacks the earth not as theme but rather as onto-episteme. Deadline: 25 May 2026

 

Counter-Image International Conference 2026

How to speak with(in) the earth? Situated knowledges, unnaming methods, and visions of the threshold

 

The question “How to speak with(in) the earth?” is not a metaphor but a political, ontological, and epistemic imperative in the face of ecological collapse, the exhaustion of anthropocentric frameworks, and the representational models of the colonial-capitalist regime and its paradigm of territorial expansion and occupation—the plantation, whose logic of extraction, objectification, and extinction persists (Le Petitcorps et al. 2023; Bastos 2020; Thomas 2019; Haraway 2015; Tsing 2015; McKittrick 2013; Mirzoeff 2011; Stoler 2008, 2016; Hartman 2007). The Posts—postcolonialism, postmodernism, posthumanism—we insist on using to make sense of a world yet to be overcome are being replaced by the prefix Geo (Pratt 2025, 2022; Coelho & Ponce de Léon 2025; Krieger 2022; Ray 2019, 2026; Latour 2018; Povinelli 2016). The “advent of the Geo,” Mary Louise Pratt (2025) points out, marks a shift in scale (from the global to the planetary), imaginary (from the political to the ecological), and temporality (from historical time to deep time—the geological). This shift implies questioning what we take for granted and adopting alternative ways of thinking and producing knowledge that Gabriela Milone and Franca Maccioni, in “The Land of Language, the Language of the Earth” (2025), have described as “geo-logy” (the language of the earth) and “geo-graphy” (the writing of the earth). This also entails “speaking with the earth” rather than “about the earth” and in terms of “similarity” rather than “difference”—a “work of imagination” and “experimentation.” Emphasising subjectivation rather than objectification (Kopenawa 2010); prioritising fusion rather than occupation (Krenak 2022).

“How to speak with(in) the earth” is therefore inseparable from the question of how the earth has been constituted as object, resource, and image—a point addressed by Ursula K. Le Guin in She Unnames Them (1985). This short story explores the colonial impulse to name and identify, creating artificial boundaries, while at the same time urging us to find ways to speak with other creatures. Speaking “with” or “as” rather than “about” the earth signals an epistemological shift, requiring a rethinking of its naming, mediation, and representation. What if the earth were not the referent of discourse but its condition? What if the possibility of speaking with/as the earth opened a space between the individual and the multiple, between situated territory and planetary totality? This dialectic is methodological: a practice of “unnaming”—of eroding the semantics of objectification, extractivism, and extinction. If the earth has been mapped, renamed, and fenced in (and private property created), it is also resistance, cosmoperception, and ritual.

The 4th Counter-Image unpacks the earth not as theme but rather as onto-episteme. It focuses on situated knowledges rooted in territories, bodies, and relations that thrive within the cracks of colonialism and capital, rather than the universal, logocentric language that separates subject from object. It challenges the anthropocentric semantics of positivist science and its fictitious objectivity to instead promote unnaming methods that suspend colonial taxonomies, while enabling the soil, the fossil, the animal, the plant, the stone, the tree, the river, the mountain, the lichen, and the fungus to reveal their unique and interconnected existences. It rejects the pseudo scientific “view from nowhere,” favouring visions from the threshold—those shaped from our grandmothers’ porches or at dusk/dawn in dialectical, incandescent images of impossible syntheses.

 

Keynote speakers:
Gabriela Milone and Franca Maccioni (Universidade Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina)
Felipe Milanez (Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil)

 

 

Call for papers

 

Aiming to raise a host of questions rather than provide the answers, the 4th Counter-Image asks: what does it mean to think with/as the earth rather than about it? Is it possible to translate the language of the earth, animals, plants, and minerals? Is “unnaming” a philosophical-aesthetic method? How the visions from the threshold suspend extractive regimes of representation? What kind of artistic practices resist, reconfigure, or disrupt colonial regimes over the land? How to foster forms of belonging, care, and reparation towards a post-extractivist world? Anchored in Portugal’s Southern region of the Algarve, but broadening its connections to other territories, we invite researchers, artists, activists, and essayists to submit proposals engaging with the following thematic axes::

1. Situated Knowledges
How and what does the earth remember? This thread welcomes works grounded in relational compositions and geo-subjectivities that challenge the “view from nowhere,” as well as uncertainty, failure, and contradiction, encouraging the connection between research and lived experience.

• “Terricidio” (Millán 2024) and buen vivir
• Artisanal epistemologies (Farago et al. 2025) and epistemologies of the South
• Decolonial, anti-extractivist, ecofeminist, queer, and trans ecologies
• “Exilic ecologies” (Marder 2023)
• Indigenous and Afro-diasporic cosmopolitics
• The baldio and the quilombo/quilombismo (B. Nascimento 1977, A. Nascimento 1980)
• “Insurgent Archivings” (Biehl 2022) and counter-cartographies
• Environmental struggles, their mourning, and multispecies justice
• Critique of Linnaean taxonomies and biopolitics
• Environmental histories, landscape politics, and “pyropolitics” (Marder 2020)

 

2. Unnaming Methods
If the act of naming is colonizing, how can unnaming promote relationality? This thread welcomes works on geo-semantics and methodological and pedagogical experiments that challenge extractivist and speciesist perspectives.

• Unnaming as a philosophical-aesthetic method
• Poetics of silence and deep listening
• Walking as method and “seeing with the whole body” (Cusicanqui 2015)
• Animal, mineral, and “fossil ontologies” (Castro 2023)
• Geo-aesthetics (Coelho & Ponce de Léon 2025; Krieger 2022; Ray 2019), including volcanic and so-called weed aesthetics
• “Liquid alliances” and aesthetics (Mendes & Garcia-Antón 2026)
• Narratives of relationality and multispecies methods
• “Contracolonizar” (Nêgo Bispo 2015)
• Art as a laboratory of thought (rather than representation)
• Animist cinema and anti-extractivist and anti-speciesist visual assemblages

 

3. Visions from the Threshold
How to inhabit the threshold and move between worlds? This thread welcomes forms that transcend the dualistic principles of the Plantationocene/Capitalocene–the geo-choreographies that broaden affinities and alliances.

• Epistemologies of the threshold
• “Dark ecology” (Morton 2016), deep time, and submerged temporalities
• Grassroots ecology
• Non-human agency and the redistribution of the sensible
• “Ruins of the Plantationocene/Capitalocene” (Tsing 2015).
• “Interstitial zones” (Gomez-Barris 2017) and riverside and seaside knowledges
• Dialectical images (Benjamin 1940) and “image-skins” (Kopenawa 2010)
• “Ch’ixi” visions (Cusicanqui 2015)
• “Affective alliances” (Krenak 2022)
• “Florestania” (Krenak 2022) and “struggling with the forest” (Milanez 2024

 

Important dates:

25 May | Proposal submission
30 June | Notification of acceptance
18-20 November | Conference

Submission formats:

1. Papers (theoretical or empirical research): 300-word abstract
2. Artistic interventions (performances, poetry readings): 300-word description
3. Discussion circles, workshops, listening walks, affective cartographies: 300-word description

Abstracts (in English, Portuguese or Spanish) should be submitted along with a short bio (100 words) to: counterimageconference@fcsh.unl.pt

 

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

 

 

Organising Committee

 

Inês Beleza Barreiros (ICNOVA — NOVA FCSH / CIAC — University of Algarve)
Liliana Coutinho (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Maria do Carmo Piçarra (ICNOVA — NOVA FCSH)
Salomé Lopes Coelho (ICON — Utrecht University / ICNOVA — NOVA FCSH)
Sílvia Leiria Viegas (CIAC — University of Algarve)
Teresa Castro (IRCAV — Sorbonne Nouvelle / ICNOVA — NOVA FCSH)
Teresa Mendes Flores (ICNOVA — NOVA FCSH)

 

 

Scientific Committee

 

Ana Lúcia Marsillac (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina)
Bruno Mendes da Silva (CIAC, University of Algarve)
Cristiana Bastos (Instituto de Ciências Sociais)
Filippo Di Tomasi (ICNOVA — NOVA FCSH)
Iacã Macerata (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina)
Isabel Stein (ICNOVA — NOVA FCSH)
Leila Lehnen (Brown University)
Luís Trindade (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Margarida Brito Alves (IHA — NOVA FCSH)
Margarida Mendes (ICNOVA — NOVA FCSH)
María Gloria Robalino (Washington University St. Louis)
Maria Teresa Cruz (ICNOVA — NOVA FCSH)
Marita Sturken (New York University)
Maura Castanheira Grimaldi (ICNOVA — NOVA FCSH)
Mirian Nogueira Tavares (CIAC — University of Algarve)
Patrícia Martins Marcos (University of Oklahoma)
Patrícia Martinho Ferreira (Brown University)
Paulo Nuno Vicente (ICNOVA — NOVA FCSH)
Rui Gomes Coelho (Durham University)
Susanne Knittel (ICON — Utrecht University)

 

 

 

 

 

Meeting that seeks to open up reflection on a variety of subjects and themes related to the history of Portuguese migration during the interwar period. Deadline: 30 April 2026

 

Between wars and peace:

New Perspectives and Challenges of Portuguese Migration (1914-1945)

 

This event aims to bring together scholars working on the history of Portuguese migration during the interwar period. Its objective is to create a space for dialogue and scientific debate based on a multidirectional and multi-geographical perspective, in order to highlight the contributions and new research approaches toward which the scholarly community has more recently turned.

The nineteenth century and the period of the Trente Glorieuses have been privileged in studies of Portuguese migration. Whether focusing on migration to transatlantic or European countries, some works have addressed the interwar period; however, these remain fragmentary and, in some cases, outdated. It is therefore necessary to gain a better understanding of the characteristics of this migration, its stakes, and its impacts, within a national and international political context marked by profound change.

The interwar period constitutes a key moment in the history of Portuguese migration. It is characterised by a renewal and intensification of international migratory movements in the aftermath of the First World War; by the strong attraction exerted on migrant workers by transatlantic countries such as the United States or Brazil; but also by the opening of new destinations, such as France, which from the 1960s onward would become the main country of settlement for Portuguese migrants. This period also corresponds to a moment when measures aimed at strengthening control over migrants’ entry and presence were implemented, particularly in the context of the 1929 economic crisis and the Great Depression.

The event thus seeks to open up reflection on a variety of subjects and themes related to the history of Portuguese migration, mobilizing both multidisciplinary approaches and perspectives that make it possible to understand and critically examine this phenomenon. It is addressed to researchers working on Portuguese migration in both transatlantic and European contexts

 

 

Call for papers

 

The topics that may be addressed include:

• World Wars and Portuguese migration
• Exile, opposition, and resistance
• Reception and support networks
• Political and trade-union engagement
• Irregular emigration
• Migration, migrants, and police and administrative management
• Emigration and immigration policies
• Policies and practices of exclusion
• Migrant agency
• Community structures
• Health and Portuguese migration
• Migration, voluntary and forced returns
• Migration and the press
• Memory of Portuguese migration
• Any other topic deemed to be of scientific interest for understanding the history of Portuguese migration during the interwar period.

 

Submission of proposals

Paper proposals should include an abstract (up to 250 words), a title, the author’s name, institutional affiliation, and a short biographical note (up to 200 words). Proposals in French, English, and Portuguese are accepted.

Proposals should be sent to the email address histmigport@gmail.com by 30 April 2026.

 

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

 

 

Organisation

 

Cristina Clímaco (Université Paris 8 / LER)
Yvette dos Santos (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)

 

 

Scientific Committee

 

Alberto Pena Rodriguez (Universidad de Vigo)
Armelle Enders (Université Paris 8 / IFG Lab)
Delphine Diaz (Université de Reims / CERHIC / IUF)
Érica Sarmiento (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro)
Heloisa Paulo (University of Coimbra)
Irene dos Santos (CNRS / URMIS)
Marcelo Borges (Dickinson College, Carlisle)
Marie-Christine Volovitch Tavares (CERMI)
Philippe Rygiel (ENS Lyon / INRIA)
Sónia Ferreira (CRIA — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
Sylvie Aprile (ISP)
Victor Pereira (IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)

 

 

Tenth edition of the congress, which aims to provide a forum for debate, sharing and critical discussion on local history as a field of historical study. Deadline: 31 July 2026

 

X Congresso de História Local

História local hoje: escalas, territórios, arquivos, comunidades e governação

 

 

O X Congresso de História Local constitui um marco relevante no percurso de uma iniciativa que, ao longo de mais de dez anos, se afirmou como espaço de referência para o debate historiográfico em torno da história local. Reunindo investigadores/as de diferentes gerações, filiações institucionais e áreas de especialidade, este encontro tem dado expressão à vitalidade de um campo em permanente renovação, como o demonstram as dezenas de comunicações apresentadas nas edições anteriores, a pluralidade de temas abordados e a diversidade de perspetivas metodológicas e epistemológicas mobilizadas. A sua continuidade, bem como o envolvimento de diferentes instituições organizadoras e de comissões científicas de reconhecida qualidade, confirmam a consolidação de uma comunidade de investigação atenta aos desafios conceptuais, documentais e públicos da história local.

A história local vive hoje um momento de renovação historiográfica particularmente estimulante. O estudo do local afirma-se como um observatório privilegiado para compreender processos históricos amplos, articular escalas de análise, testar interpretações consolidadas e aprofundar o conhecimento sobre fenómenos sociais, políticos, económicos, culturais e ambientais tal como se inscrevem em territórios, instituições e experiências situadas. Nesta perspectiva, a história local ganha especial relevância enquanto campo capaz de pôr em relação o micro, o regional, o nacional, o imperial e o global, contribuindo para uma historiografia mais densa, mais relacional e mais atenta à pluralidade dos contextos.

Neste quadro, a história local dialoga de forma cada vez mais intensa com a micro-história, a história regional, a história urbana e rural, a história ambiental, a história pública, a história oral, os estudos do património, as humanidades digitais e as abordagens comparativas e conectadas. O estudo de comunidades, paisagens, redes, poderes, arquivos, bibliotecas, memórias, conflitos, práticas de governação e usos públicos do passado permite compreender o local como lugar de densidade analítica, mediação social e produção crítica de conhecimento.

Este processo convida igualmente a repensar os suportes e as infraestruturas da investigação. Arquivos, bibliotecas, centros de documentação, colecções locais, repositórios digitais e redes locais de memória e conhecimento assumem um papel crescente na preservação, organização, mediação e democratização do saber histórico. A expansão da história oral, da participação comunitária, dos arquivos comunitários, da cartografia digital e das humanidades espaciais tem, por seu turno, vindo a alargar os métodos, os públicos e os modos de circulação da história local.

O X Congresso de História Local, a realizar no Porto, entre 24 e 26 de Novembro de 2026, na Biblioteca Municipal Almeida Garrett, pretende acompanhar e estimular esta renovação.

 

 

 

---

 

Chamada para comunicações

 

Dando continuidade às edições anteriores, o congresso propõe-se como espaço de debate, partilha e problematização em torno da história local enquanto campo historiográfico, prática de investigação e forma de mediação entre conhecimento académico, comunidades e território. Acolherá, por isso, contributos de natureza empírica, teórica e metodológica, bem como propostas que promovam o diálogo entre investigação histórica, ensino, história oral, arquivos, bibliotecas, património e participação pública.

A edição de 2026 reveste-se ainda de particular significado por coincidir com os 50 anos das primeiras eleições autárquicas democráticas. Esta efeméride convida a revisitar o poder local em democracia, a formação e consolidação das autarquias, o papel dos municípios e das freguesias, os processos de participação e representação, as transformações da administração local e as mudanças ocorridas nos territórios ao longo de meio século. Ao mesmo tempo, oferece uma oportunidade para analisar, à escala local, os modos concretos de construção da democracia, os seus ritmos, tensões, assimetrias e legados.

Convidam-se, assim, historiadores/as, investigadores/as, professores/as, estudantes, profissionais de arquivos, bibliotecas e património, bem como demais estudiosos/as, a submeter propostas de comunicação no amplo domínio da história local. Serão particularmente bem-vindas propostas que contribuam para aprofundar o lugar da história local na historiografia contemporânea, os seus instrumentos conceptuais, os seus desafios metodológicos e as suas articulações com outras escalas, campos e práticas de investigação.

• Teoria, historiografia, epistemologia e metodologias da história local
• História local entre o micro, o regional, o nacional, o imperial e o global
• Circulações, redes, conexões e abordagens comparativas, conectadas ou translocais
• Território, paisagem, ambiente, recursos e transformações socio-ecológicas
• História rural, urbana e regional em perspetiva renovada
• Municípios, freguesias, poder local, administração e governação territorial
• 50 anos das eleições autárquicas democráticas: participação, representação, cidadania e transformação local
• Comunidades, identidades, pertenças, memória e património
• História oral, testemunho, memória e conhecimento situado
• Arquivos, bibliotecas, centros de documentação, coleções locais e redes territoriais de conhecimento
• História pública, mediação cultural, participação comunitária e usos públicos do passado local
• Elites, sociabilidades, instituições, associativismo e trajetórias locais
• Trabalho, economia, mobilidades, infraestruturas, desigualdades e conflito social
• Violência política, resistência, repressão e democratização à escala local
• Perspetivas decoloniais, histórias situadas e crítica das narrativas hegemónicas
• Ferramentas digitais, cartografia histórica, SIG, bases de dados e humanidades espaciais

 

O congresso acolherá com particular interesse propostas que articulem investigação histórica rigorosa com reflexão conceptual, inovação metodológica e atenção às formas contemporâneas de preservação, circulação e uso do conhecimento histórico.

Serão igualmente valorizadas comunicações que explorem o potencial da história local para compreender problemas mais vastos, produzir conhecimento socialmente relevante e reforçar a ligação entre investigação, território e cidadania.

Painel para jovens investigadores: à semelhança das edições anteriores, o congresso pretende também incentivar a participação de estudantes em início de percurso académico, promovendo a sua integração em contextos de discussão científica exigentes e formativos.

 

Envio de propostas

Todas as propostas deverão ser submetidas através do formulário disponível 🔗neste link. até 31 de Julho de 2026.

 

Inscrições

A inscrição no congresso é individual e gratuita e deverá ser feita através do formulário disponível 🔗neste link até ao dia 23 de Novembro de 2026.

 

Calendarização

Submissão de propostas: até 31 de Julho de 2026
Notificação de aceitação de propostas: 20 de Setembro de 2026
Divulgação do Programa: 20 de Setembro de 2026
Prazo para inscrições: até 23 de Novembro de 2026
Congresso: 24 a 26 de Novembro de 2026

 

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)
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)

 

 

 

 

The aim of the fourth Karl Marx Congress is to analyse the crisis of neoliberal capitalism (1980s – first quarter of the 21st century). Deadline: 30 June 2026

 

 

4th Karl Marx Congress

The Crisis of Neoliberal Capitalism and Necropolitics

 

 

The 4th Karl Marx Congress will take place on 22 and 23 January 2027 at NOVA FCSH (Av. de Berna campus, Lisbon, Portugal), organised by the following institutions: Centre for Social Studies (CES), University of Coimbra; CULTRA — Association of Political Economy; Institute of Contemporary History (IHC), NOVA University Lisbon; Institute of Sociology, University of Porto; STEXEU project — The Constitutional Road to Dictatorship (ERC Grant 101163723).

The aim of the congress is to analyse the crisis of neoliberal capitalism (1980s – first quarter of the 21st century) from a dual perspective: that of historical analysis and that of theoretical debate of the crisis in its various dimensions, along with the study of related experiences of social, political, or cultural activism.

To this end, the congress will be organised around plenary sessions (keynote speeches) and the following seven thematic sections:

• Section I: The economic and financial crisis of neoliberal capitalism (nature and characteristics of the crisis of late capitalism; rates of profit and accumulation; centre and periphery; technological revolution and technocracies; financialisation; cryptocurrencies; the privatisation offensive; old and new forms of surplus value extraction and related issues)
• Section II: Politics, hyperpolitics and necropolitics (crisis of legitimacy/representativeness of liberal systems; the capitulation of liberalism; the decline of the two-party system between social democracy and liberal and conservative forces; the neo-fascist threat and its characteristics in the current era; the radicalisation of the traditional right; Trumpism and related phenomena; struggles and impasses of the emancipatory left)
• Section III: Social transformations and struggles (structural and behavioural changes within the working classes, segmentation, precarisation, unionisation; the new balance of power in the world of work: the 2025–26 labour reform in Portugal within the international context of the counter-reform of labour rights; migrant labour; migration, the international division of labour and racialised regimes of accumulation; fear and insecurity among the middle and marginalised classes; processes of pauperisation; changes within the ruling classes, technoligarchy; the new role of algorithmic manipulation and social media; heteronormativity and queer Marxism; experiences of struggle in the workplace, housing, healthcare, education, etc.).
• Section IV: Late capitalism, ecological and environmental disaster, and ecosocialism (the environmental policies of capitalism; the ecological and environmental crisis and its evolution; growth and degrowth, the Anthropocene and the Capitalocene, extractivism; experiences of environmental activism in its various forms and expressions)
• Section V: Feminisms, emancipation and social reproduction (patriarchy and the situation of women in society, politics and the culture of late capitalism; reproductive labour and struggles surrounding social reproduction; LGBTQIA+ rights and discrimination, overexploitation, violence, male power: coexistence, impunity, political conquests, the current situation; neo-fascism, male chauvinism, anti-feminism; feminist struggles; the emancipatory left and the feminist movement; the various currents and expressions of contemporary feminisms).
• Section VI: Culture and cultural counter-revolution (the role of cultural counter-revolution in the emergence of the new neo-fascist far right; the various dimensions of conservative and fascist cultural revisionism: in history, memory, politics, social discourse, ideology; the new role of democratic and mass culture in the transformative understanding of present realities).
• Section VII: Imperialism, war and genocide (new and old forms of imperialism; wars of aggression and imperial rivalry: Ukraine, Palestine, Lebanon, Iran; the collapse of multilateralism and international law; the unpunished return of gunboat diplomacy and the law of the jungle; Trumpism and Latin America: Cuba, Venezuela and similar cases; the arms race; the threat of World War III; the struggles against imperial necropolitics).

 

 

Call for papers

 

 

Proposals for papers for the congress will only be considered by the Scientific Committee under the following conditions:

a) Their content must fall within the thematic scope of the seven sections of the congress;
b) They must take the form of abstracts – in Portuguese or English – of no more than 2,000 characters, including a very brief identifying note and the authors’ short bio;
c) They must be submitted using this online form.

All proposals for papers must be received by 30 June 2026.

Proposals will be assessed by the congress’ Scientific Committee and proposers will be notified of the outcome by 30 September 2026. FCSH’s room capacity may limit the number of paper proposals that can be accepted.

The 4th Karl Marx Congress is open to the public and admission is free.

 

 

Organising Committee

 

Arturo Zoffmann Rodriguez, IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST
Fernando Rosas, IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST / CULTRA
Giulia Strippoli, IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST
Jonas Van Vossole, CES — University of Coimbra
José Soeiro, Instituto de Sociologia — FLUP
Luís Trindade, IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST
Manuel Loff, FLUP / IHC — NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST
Mariana Mortágua, DINÂMIA’CET — Iscte

 

 

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