This project reconstructs series for Brazil’s population, prices, wages, welfare ratios, gross domestic product (GDP), and GDP per capita from the seventeenth century to 1920. This is the first reconstruction of consistent, annual population and economic series for this period and will change the understanding that we have today of Brazil’s historical economic growth. This project will be conducted at the Institute of Social Sciences (ICS) of the University of Lisbon, under the supervision of Nuno Palma, with Jaime Reis as a member of the board. Long-run GDP per capita series are central to economic growth research, to test competing hypotheses about why nations grow and decline, and for main debates in comparative historical development, such as the great divergence and the colonial origins debates. Until today, however, Brazil has been excluded from these areas of research. This project intends to bridge this gap using known figures in the literature, recently digitized archival sources, and novel archival research in the Overseas Historical Archive and the Torre do Tombo National Archive in Portugal. In addition to providing the first series of four centuries of Brazilian economic growth, it will contribute to a number of debates in the specialized and interdisciplinary literatures and generate open-access databases with the reconstructed time series.

The Salazar regime was the longest-lasting dictatorship in Europe in the Twentieth Century. If the Military Dictatorship from which it emerged is taken into account, it lasted 48 years, from 1926 to 1974. Like the other dictatorships born in the inter-war years, it relied heavily on its secret police (PIDE) for stability. This research programme aims to reconceptualise the relation between the PIDE and Portuguese society in order to reach a more complete understanding of the regime’s exceptional durability. By drawing on developments in the international bibliography of totalitarianisms, of everyday life under a dictatorship, and of denunciatory practices, it challenges the established interpretative paradigm which sees the relation between the PIDE and society almost exclusively as one of top-down repression imposed upon a nation of passive victims. Its core argument is that the relation between the PIDE and Portuguese society was far more multi-facetted, dynamic and interactive than has been acknowledged until now. This research project posits as its main underlying thesis the notion that the Salazarist system was normalised by many Portuguese citizens as part of the structure of everyday life. Society adapted to the institutional framework imposed by the regime - including the secret police -, acting on the opportunities that opened up rather than remaining dependent or passive. If the role of society in the perpetuation of the Salazarist order is to be duly assessed, the framework of interaction between society and the secret police must be apprehended with recourse to a novel analytical prism (focusing on ordinary citizens instead of on the small minority of oppositionists who have monopolised the attention of historians so far), new research methodologies (oral history and opinion surveying) and original archival material (the letters of denunciation held at the PIDE Archives in Lisbon).

This research focuses on how within two contexts –in the Global North in Lisbon, and in the Global South in Goa – young people negotiate landscapes of touristification and neoliberalisation that relate to their futures. Exponential urban redevelopment, climate change and heightened capitalism manifest in both places through changes made to accommodate an economy focused on tourism-boosting. Austerity in Portugal, and a boost to tourism-centred jobs in Goa has resulted in young people leaving in search of jobs elsewhere. However, a large portion continue to stay back in these geographies and are employed by the tourism industry which paradoxically gentrifies them. This research will aim to understand how young people make sense of their futures through new, gig economies in rapidly changing job landscapes, whilst simultaneously making space for themselves by negotiating this very environment - they therefore resist while also existing. It will consider potential conflicts and shared understandings, while making sense of the entanglements of youth job cultures, future considerations, and the relationship to a sense of place. Sharing a history, albeit of colonialism, (Portugal colonised Goa from 1510 until 1961 after which the latter was taken over by India) makes for a novel perspective of Global North-South as well as a post-colonial dynamic which is missing from existing knowledge. The project will use a cross-cultural case study approach, with qualitative research methods in line with critical ethnography. The project will be strengthened by the multi-disciplinary background of the researcher in sociology and geography, alongside contribution from other disciplinary perspectives through researchers at the host institution. It aims to create both academic outputs as well as material and content for public engagement and dissemination.

The ERA Chair on Imagination and Society at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon (ICS-ULisboa) aims to establish the first permanent chair in Europe dedicated to interdisciplinary research on the social dimensions of imagination. As new technologies defy established understandings of the world, the Chair will steer innovative research and explore the critical role of imagination in addressing societal issues. Under the direction of Prof. Ramon Sarró (University of Oxford) IMAGINE will drive organisational development and capacity building, securing ICS-ULisboa as a centre of excellence attracting and retaining international talents. This proposal results from the collaboration with the designated Chair holder in an endeavour to (re-)imagine the Institute’s role for the years to come. The project builds on a solid assessment of ICS contribution to defining social science research in Portugal, and brings forward an ambitious coordination and support programme, framed into 4 strategic objectives. The ERA Chair will 1) Recruit and mentor an outstanding team, including the future Group leader, three early career researchers, two doctoral students and one technical staff; 2) Enhance strategic institutional reforms in line with the ERA priorities; 3) Develop an interdisciplinary research agenda on Imagination and Society feeding on ICS’s mission; 4) Increase competitiveness in international R&I funding. The plan of activities sets out the strategies and intermediate steps to maximise impact and provide sustainability in the long term. Research carried out under the interdisciplinary ERA Chair will embed gender as a core dimension, adopt best Open Science practices, and implement principles of FAIR data management and sharing. IMAGINE will engage with different publics and players to foster imagination literacy, promote cultural events and debates, and integrate “critical imagination” and creativity in education and training.

PolarScopEU proposes an original application, tailored for the context of different EU countries, that will measure and map, in two-dimensional spaces, the polarisation of their online social networks. This tool, to be made available first in Greece, Portugal and Spain, addresses not only the impact that online political communication, and misinformation, is having nowadays on democratic institutions, but also citizens’ unawareness of existing biases in the online political information that they are exposed to. More concretely, relying on automated analyses of Social Media content to assess politicisation levels of multiple key issues, this application will allow its users to: 1) better understand how they place, in terms of the online content that they create and consume, in two major dimensions of political content: diversity and bias; and 2) find out which actors are closer to them when it comes to the politicisation of several important issues (e.g., European Integration, Immigration, Environment). In order to create this application, the PolarScopEU will develop two additional products of extreme value for researchers and organisations to study, and monitor, online political communication. The first one is an innovative tool to measure, using alternative sources of text data, the levels of salience and contestation of different political issues. The second product is a periodically updated database, for each country, with polarisation and issue politicisation scores for an extensive list of national actors, including political parties, news media and other key opinion makers. These products will facilitate the comparison of issue politicisation across countries, time periods, and actors and originate an innovative polarisation index of online political communication in the EU countries.