MPhil and PhD research programmes

Institutions, Power and Sciences

Institutions are grounded on socially recognised discourses and practices that govern groups’ interactions based on the relationships they build between themselves and with the State. Institutions are studied from the interfaces between power structures and society, highlighting the networks in which they are constructed and social control mechanisms. Power is perceived as a relational construct through which social agents act and interact, legitimising and internalising values and norms. The relationships between institutions and social groups/individuals are addressed based on disputes over hegemony. Science is understood from its institutionalisation process, ranging from research institutes to the complex links between the knowledge construction, new technologies and society. The interface between institutions, power and sciences allows studies on legitimacy production in its social plurality and historicity.

Culture, Power and Representations

Culture is understood as a symbolic system shared by social groups, translated as lived practices and representations understood as codes, values, discourses and knowledge shaping actions structuring the world. Social actions are symbolically referred to through beliefs, sensitivities and worldviews that shape society. Representations take different forms and are historically constructed. From the cultural perspective, power is considered through the identity, institutional and social constructions that mark the set of relationships between groups/individuals at different levels of society. Forms of negotiation and conflicts between the official/formal and the popular/informal are valued, as well as the possibilities of reception, appropriation, exchange, deviation, recreation of discourses and knowledge (political, religious, philosophical, legal, scientific and others) over time.

Heritage, Teaching History and Historiography

History is produced, disseminated, and apprehended in different media, places, and moments, through different forms of expression, while historiography is an aesthetically structured narrative, capable of reaching audiences’ sensitivity not involved with knowledge production institutions. Studies are developed on the forms, strategies and needs of elaborating the past, through cultural heritage, the writing of History and the teaching of History, with reflections on heritage and cultural goods as ways of narrating, presenting, and giving visibility to the past, as well as the narrative forms of historical writing to understand how societies elaborate and elaborate their past. In this research programme, Public History is also studied, aiming to reflect on History inside and outside the classroom, in places of memory production, media, artistic production and other work areas for historians.