Last week, we learned about the results of the sixth edition of the Call to Scientific Employment Stimulus (CEEC) promoted by the FCT, in which eight new research contracts were awarded to the IHC: six in the Junior Researcher category and two in the Assistant Researcher category, which will result in five new PhD members joining the Institute.

In the category of Assistant Researcher, Yvette Santos will continue her research into migration, now focusing on the repatriation of Portuguese emigrants from Rio de Janeiro, Paris and New York in the inter-war period, namely through the intervention (or lack thereof) of the Portuguese state. Who were the (un)desirables? The IHC researcher’s hypothesis is that the Portuguese state’s selection system was based on an idea of utility (both economic and political).

Also as an Assistant Researcher, we will welcome Paula Albuquerque, who will be returning from the Netherlands to begin a project in which she proposes to make a comparative, anarchival, and decolonial analysis of the colonial film collections of the Eye Film Museum (Amsterdam) and the Portuguese Cinematheque (Lisbon). She will relate the continuities between Dutch and Portuguese practices, which created regimes of indebtedness through biased portrayals of native peoples as less developed and in need of foreign support.

Anita Buhin, a postdoctoral fellow at the IHC, will start a Junior Researcher contract with which she will be able to deepen her research into “Mediterranean masculinities”. In this project, she will analyse how young men from three Mediterranean countries (Yugoslavia, Portugal, and Italy) shaped their masculinities through sexual and romantic encounters, how their version of masculinity corresponded to the hegemonic masculinity of their countries, and how they were influenced by official ideologies between the 1960s and 1980s.

Joana Paulino, a Junior Researcher at the IHC’s Digital Humanities Laboratory, will start a new research project where she intends to develop a prosopography of the wet nurses of foundlings in Lisbon (1850-1900), defining the profile of the women who served in the Lisbon Foundling House, studying the importance of their salaries for the family and local economy, and comparing this female labour market with other European cities.

From the United States of America, we will host Brooks Marmon, Junior Researcher, for a research project on the international implications of the collapse of the Portuguese empire, more specifically, examining the influence of decolonisation in Angola, Mozambique and Portugal on political thought, action and statecraft in Rhodesia (colonial Zimbabwe).

From Spain, we will welcome two new researchers with Junior Researcher contracts: Carlos Píriz-González and Mónica García-Fernández. Carlos Píriz-González will carry out a comparative historical study of the Portuguese and Spanish intelligence services during their respective dictatorships, focusing on three pillars: institution, protagonists, and punitive practices.

For her part, Mónica García-Fernández proposes to study the role of war godmothers from a comparative and transnational perspective, covering different countries and war contexts in the 20th century. The aim is, through the study of correspondence, visual representations and other archive documents, to obtain information on women’s participation, transnational female activism, writing practices, subjectivities and emotions in times of war.

Finally, from the Philippines, via the Netherlands, we will host Carmina Untalan, who proposes to develop an ambitious study project: to rethink the field of International Relations using four cosmopolitan anti-colonial figures: Rizal, Cabral, Fanon, and Hatta. The project will examine how these figures used comparison as a mode of decolonisation to understand the colonial condition and build their decolonisation projects. This analysis will be applied to two contemporary global issues: the rise of China and climate change.

The IHC welcomes this excellent result for the institution, while regretting that so many high quality candidates did not have the opportunity to achieve their desired and just result.