Consortium for the History of Science and Technology

Description

The participant institutions – MP, CHC-UL/CHFCT-UNL [after 2007, the two research centres became CIUHCT], ICS – join together in the proposed workplan to further develop this inter-institutional group of work around the common objective of developing the History of Science & Technology in Portugal.

For the University of Lisbon, this is a timely opportunity to reinforce its research capacity in an area that is currently perceived as significant and outreaching. Moreover, this proposal is robustly frameworked by an extended plan of activities designed to revitalize the Museological Complex hosted at Escola Politécnica.

This ensemble holds an extraordinary asset of scientific collections in the fields of natural history, geology, anthropology and botany, constituting one of the most valuable objects of study in Portuguese universities. 

The scientific valorisation of this patrimony, as well as its use as an anchorage for activities aimed at promoting public awareness of science and culture, has become a clear objective of UL. Given the diagnosed economic constraints of such enterprise, the University of Lisbon is actively engaging in multiple initiatives aimed to build a resourceful masterplan for the whole Complex. In this sense, the contracting of research staff is of crucial significance.

The Consortium for the History of Science & Technology consortium is herein committing to two major contributions:

1. In the short term, research work will be oriented towards the commemorations of the University centenary (1911-2011), namely by preparing a publications scheme including collected works and papers on the institutional histories of the EP, FCUL and OAL which go beyond traditional approaches, both in thematic organisation and methodological orientations.
2. In the longer term, there is the plan for the digital treatment of selected primary sources (manuscript and printed), as well as the development of an oral history archive which will host fundamental material to the next generations of scholars. In this task, UL assumes a preponderant role by hosting a main centralised library dedicated to the maintenance and study of historical sources.