General Coordination: Prof. Doutor José Alberto Gomes Machado

(Department of History, University of Évora)

2009-2017

Art collecting in Portugal

This aims to research and make known one of the least studied aspects of Portuguese culture, fundamental for a characterization of what it encompasses in historical and artistic terms. It concerns principally the 17th to 19th centuries and, in the first instance, will focus on the aristocratic collections, which are often cited but little known and of which only very few inventories have been published.

Connecting Cities

Virtual forum for the exposition and debate of ideas on the history of urban development, understood in terms of its many variables, from an international perspective. For 2 years the site will be open to contributions (subject to a process of selection), in French and English, from Portuguese and foreign researchers whose work and studies are encompassed by the following topics:

  • Memory and Development – architectural and urban permanence in intimate relationship with the city in evolution. Elements that remain despite the transformations that cities have undergone over time and that have continued to stand out beyond the sedimentation of different periods, even when they have apparently lost their original purpose or meaning. What has survived because in some sense it has come to be regarded as a point of identity of a city and its inhabitants for successive generations.
  • Place and History – cities that today are urban centres of small or medium size, but which at a given moment in history, because of some concrete factor, have had a particular importance and which still display architectural and urban features that attest to their lost status.
  • Utopia and Habitat – Idealization of a city or cities, through projects that never came about, urban proposals of a theoretical nature, descriptions (travel narratives, travel guides, monographs) and representations (paintings, engravings, illuminations, frescoes, photographs). Understanding how discourse on the architecture and spaces of a city may alter our perceptions and experiences of the urban space – including historiographical discourse.

Franco-Portuguese artistic relations

This project aims above all to publish hitherto unpublished documents involving significant names in European cultural history, with a view to preparing an edition and subsequently publishing the following two studies: Les années parisiennes by Domingos Rebelo (1907-1913) and Francisco de Lacerda, L’ ami portugais de Claude Debussy.

2018

His main areas of specialization are the history of painting and tiles (16th-20th centuries), the history of architecture (16th-20th centuries), photography (19th-20th centuries), the historiography of art, the history and theory of heritage and its conservation, and digital heritage. It includes a component of theatre history, focused on puppet theatre, dramaturgy and translation, which is linked to the Theatre and Performance Studies group. Coordinates the transversality of the history and theory component of heritage and conservation in relation to other research groups, focusing on the critical study of the ideological, aesthetic and social components of discourses on the arts of the past between the 16th and 20th centuries. Research in the area of ​​digital heritage stands out, applied to the history of architecture and the city, with a focus on the application of digital technology to the representation and communication of historical knowledge, and the changes it is introducing in the process of heuristics, criticism and interpretation of knowledge in art history. He is particularly interested in how digital technology can provide a laboratory research dimension to the Humanities.

Archaeology

General coordination: Prof. Doutor Jorge de Oliveira and Clara Oliveira

Projects in progress

ARA Project – Rock Art of Arronches (2009-2013)

Study of rock art of the county Arronches and its archaeological context.

Funding: Arronches City Council approved by the IGESPAR

Actions 2009:

  • Survey,Tracing, photo and excavation of the Gaivões Shelter
  • Survey,Tracing, photo and excavation of the Igreja dos Mouros Shelter
  • Surveys on the area field of Esperança
  • X-Ray fluorescence analysis of the quimical composition of the paintings in the shelters of Gaivões and Igreja dos Mouros ( Universidade da Extremadura – Badajoz)

Actions 2010:

  • Survey,Tracing, photo and excavation of the Pinho Monteiro Shelter
  • Pollen and charcoal collecting for the ancient flora study (Universidade da Extremadura – Badajoz)
  • Organic substance colleting for C14 datation
  • X-Ray fluorescence analysis of the quimical composition of the paintings in the shelter of Pinho Monteiro ( Universidade da Extremadura – Badajoz)

ARFA Project – Rock Art of Alegrete (2010-2011)

Funding: Alegrete local government, aproved by the IGESPAR

Actions 2010:

  • Survey,Tracing, photo and excavation of the Cave of Nª. Srª. da Lapa hermitage
  • Surveys in the area field of Alegrete
  • X-Ray fluorescence analysis of the quimical composition of the paintings in the Cave of Nª. Srª. da Lapa hermitage ( Universidade da Extremadura – Badajoz).