Strategic Plan

The 2025-2029 CH-ULisboa’s Strategic Plan is titled Societies in Tense Connections, and focuses on tensions and conflict in human societies. It maintains from the previous one the idea that connectivity is constitutive of human history but chooses to think of interactions within and between societies as processes that generate tensions with different temporal and spatial imbrications.

In Anthropocene era, environmental instability, and inequality across lines of class, race, and gender call for a rethinking of concepts. Power entails dominion which engendered practices and languages of resistance and accommodation. Tense and conflict-ridden environments encourage the clash of identities shaped by social memories and heritage. Only through the historicization of contexts, geographies, events, life experiences, is possible to identify and explain the different economic, social, political, and cultural dimensions of the conflicts.

In the 2025-2029 CH-ULisboa’s Strategic Plan attention is paid to the modalities of confrontation, as well as the strategies of resolution or accommodation of tensions, assessing continuities or discontinuities of conflicts in new forms. The resilience or inability of institutions and commonly accepted norms to overcome conflict—within and between societies—as well as the emergence of new modalities of managing tensions, sometimes born in ‘contact zones’, will be analyzed. The broad scope of the CH-ULisboa’s research enables leading studies on the categorization of cultural identities throughout history, shaping real or imagined tensions, and helping to explain past and present-day conflicts. The appropriation of heritage in colonial contexts will be considered in various geographies.

CH-ULisboa is defined by a long durée approach, employing different time scales and spatial contexts, and is committed with a polyphonic vision of connected history which acknowledge the immense variety of contributions for global history. Environmental History is a key area of development, with a focus on increasing the impact of research on contemporary society. Promoting scholarly outreach and engagement with diverse audiences and institutions is a growing interest. CH-ULisboa also prioritizes Gender History, the History of Religions, the History of Universities, Maritime History, and Historiography, reinforcing prior achievements.