This week saw the launch of the digital archive “Os Mutilados da Guerra (1914-1918): reavivar uma memória” [The War Maimed (1914-1918): Reviving a Memory], which aims to “work as a starting point for the study and dissemination of the history of the Portuguese maimed in the First World War”. In addition to analysing the types of mutilations that were inflicted on the combatant’s body during the conflict, it also allows “to understand how the process of rehabilitation, professional re-education, and social reintegration of the maimed took place in the post-war period”.

The portal was created by Filipa Caetano, a 3rd year student of the BA in History at the NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities, as part of the curricular internship “Building digital archives for the dissemination of historical sources“, promoted by the Digital Humanities Lab at the IHC, under the supervision of researchers Daniel Alves and Joana Vieira Paulino.

Picture: A patient examines a plaster cast of his own face which will be used to conceal the loss of his eye, 3rd London General Hospital. Author: Horace Nicholls (undated). Source: Imperial War Museum. © IWM (Q 30455)