Political History – Regimes, Transitions, and Memory

Coordination: Arturo Zoffmann

The Research Group in Political History is dedicated to the study of politics, favouring the analysis of four historical and geographical contexts:

• The April Revolution of 1974, from its antecedents to the first years of the current Portuguese democratic regime;
• Colonial policies, anti-colonial nationalist movements in Africa, and the end of the Portuguese Empire;
• European fascisms and anti-fascism, with a greater focus on the study of the Portuguese Estado Novo (1926-1974) and Francoist Spain (1939-1976);
• The emergence and crisis of liberalism and republicanism in Portugal, from the Liberal Revolution of 1820 to the First Republic (1910-1926).

It also investigates the processes of production and dispute of memory related to events such as the Colonial War, the Holocaust, or the Spanish Civil War. The question of the political uses of the past is itself the subject of postgraduate teaching, within the framework of the Erasmus+ History in the Public Sphere master’s programme, coordinated by and with the collaboration of researchers from the group.

In the context of its extra-academic activity, the group has made a continuous and critical contribution to public memory policies. This contribution is evident in the relevance of the group’s researchers in the current Official Commemorations of the 50th Anniversary of 25 April, in the Nunca Esquecer [Nunca Esquecer] programme or, also, in the implementation of the National Museum of Resistance and Freedom and, at municipal level, the Aljube Museum.