«Pai Nosso – Os últimos dias de Salazar»

Com Fernando Rosas (Historiador) e José Filipe Costa (realizador)

Nesta sessão especial, Fernando Rosas, historiador, investigador do IHC e professor catedrático jubilado da Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, vai conversar com José Filipe Costa, realizador do filme,  a seguir à sessão de «Pai Nosso – Os últimos dias de Salazar».

Em colaboração com o Cinema Ideal.

Seminário de investigação que procura alargar o campo dos estudos sobre o petróleo para além das narrativas, geografias e fronteiras disciplinares estabelecidas, dando maior destaque às perspetivas do Sul Global e de outros locais de extracção e resistência.

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)

Este seminário convida à reflexão sobre memórias, patrimónios e diferentes formas de produzir conhecimento, dando espaço a perspectivas decoloniais e às heranças africanas.

Decolonial Epistemologies: Museum, Archives, Circulation, Reparation and African Heritages

O processo de descolonização dos museus também começa gradualmente com os movimentos de independência dos países africanos, através da tarefa de resgatar a identidade cultural e a auto expressão das comunidades africanas. A conferência Decolonial Epistemologies in the Museum: Archives, Circulation, Reparation, and African Heritages propõe uma reflexão crítica sobre o museu enquanto espaço de poder e sobre o questionamento das narrativas museológicas. A conferência irá discutir as possibilidades e os desafios da descolonização, da reparação histórica e da construção de novas epistemologias no museu, propondo perspetivas múltiplas, relacionais, reflexivas e interdisciplinares relacionadas com o passado e o legado cultural. Em conjunto, iremos refletir sobre o papel do museu no contexto social e geopolítico atual em transformação.

Participação livre, mediante inscrição prévia obrigatória: geral@museus.ulisboa.pt

Organização: Nuno Silas (UE/IHC/IN2PAST)

» Programa do seminário (PDF) «

Conferência sobre as alterações nas vidas dos movimentos de independência, que visa explorar a evolução e transformação das lutas anticoloniais e anti-imperialistas. Prazo: 13 Fevereiro 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.

Programa de Doutoramento de História (História e Filosofia da Ciência – Museologia), dia 30 de Junho, inserido nas Jornadas Doutorais da Universidade de Évora.

Programa de Doutoramento de História (História e Filosofia da Ciência – Museologia)

As Jornadas Doutorais pretendem constituir um espaço de encontro e partilha entre doutorandos de todas as áreas científicas, integrando as sessões individuais de defesa do projeto de tese e de relatório de progresso de cada programa doutoral, bem como atividades conjuntas que promovam a interdisciplinaridade e o desenvolvimento dos trabalhos de investigação.

Este evento pretende constituir um espaço de encontro e partilha entre doutorandos de todas as áreas científicas, integrando as sessões individuais de defesa do projeto de tese e de relatório de progresso de cada programa doutoral, bem como atividades conjuntas que promovam a interdisciplinaridade e o desenvolvimento dos trabalhos de investigação.

No dia 30 de Junho irá decorrer um programa dedicado ao curso de Doutoramento em História (História e Filosofia da Ciência – Museologia), na sala 120, auditório CES.