Research group: Science (CEHFCi-UÉ)
Coordination: Maria de Fátima Nunes
The CEHFCi group of the University of Évora – an extension of the IHC at the University of Évora (Alentejo) – combines research in modern and contemporary history, with a comparative approach, with a focus on research and advanced training on science, and studies on History, Philosophy and Scientific Culture.
The group has a coordinator, integrated researchers, (university professors and retired professors), postdoc research fellows (four, in 2016), PhD studentships funded by the FCT and PhD students in History and of Philosophy of Science – specializing in Museology with nearly completed theses. The group has regular scientific activities (seminars, research journeys, colloquiums, workshops), responds to national/international calls, undergoes peer-reviewing, publishes, and further interacts, on a regular basis, with other national research units.
CEHFCi also develops activities of initiation to research in the undergraduate courses of the University of Évora, as well as a role in the scientific framework of the Master’s Courses in History of the same university. Regular participation in scientific and cultural activities – outreach – on a national level and in the Alentejo region, involving researchers from other research groups from the IHC and other research units. The group has working links with several other national and international research centres.
Aims
The team has consolidated strategic axes that are part of the strategy which places Évora and the Alentejo in the Lisbon Arch and the Atlantic Strategy [Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2015].
- History of Science in a context of interdisciplinarity, in which the agenda of invisibilities in History and Philosophy of Science has a strategic role in the formatting of different scientific outputs, in addition to several ongoing PhD thesis.
- Key words: innovation and development; heritagization; collections; historiography; memory; culture; ideology; science and international relations; science and colonial spaces.
To achieve these aims we delineated a growing and internationalisation strategy, which comprises the National Museum of Natural History and Science (MUHNAC-UL), our strategic scientific partner, in addition to other national and international partnerships, in order to bring into the IHC agreement proposals about modernity and contemporaneity:
- The research within the group is grounded on the PhD students in History and Philosophy of Science – Museology, on the several PhD programmes where we intervene and on the Master’s Courses in History, Cultural Heritage, and Science Education Science .
- We have reinforced our internationalisation, encouraging our PhD students – fellows and non-fellows – to actively participate in this strategy, diversifying the fora for information and scientific activities in the fields of History, Philosophy of Science, and Scientific Culture.
- We have brought into the IHC agreement proposals about modernity and contemporaneity of current societies, with our core research in partnerships with local governments – as is de relevant case of the City Councils of Mértola, Porto de Mós, Batalha, Figueira da Foz –, places where we have established partnerships that have given rise to different types of outputs.
- The progressive use of Open Access for both organised or published scientific production, which translates into websites of events, publication in Open Access journals and, lastly, the placing of the scientific production on the institutional repositories of the NOVA University and the University of Évora. We further highlight the researchers’ efforts to use research and educational pages as their personal webpages, where they enable the dissemination of work financed by IHC-CEHFCi and the FCT.
- The interaction between the IHC research groups, with the mediation of PhD students and IHC-CEHFCi fellows.
Integrated Members
Associated Members
Research fields
▪ History of science and scientific culture (18th to 21st century);
▪ History and Philosophy Science and Technology;
▪ «Science & Education» – Experimental cultures;
▪ Scientific invisibilities – Biographies, institutions, objects, and collections.
