Serdecznie zapraszamy na wykład pt. “Universality(ies)” of a European outermost region: the case of the Azores Islands (Portugal) in the 19th and 20th centuries, który poprowadzi
Prof. Susana Paula Franco Serpa Silva z CHAM Açores – Centre for Humanities (FCSH – New University of Lisbon/University of the Azores),
w ramach projektu „NextGenPhDs – Innowacje” programu NAWA STER – Umiędzynarodowienie szkół doktorskich
Wykład odbędzie się 26 lutego 2026 r. o godzinie 14.00 w Instytucie Historii PAN (Rynek Starego Miasta 31, Sala Kościuszkowska)
Since the mid-20th century, historiography has coined the concept of Atlantic History as part of Global History and as an analytical construct of major events of the modern period, as highlighted by Greene and Morgan (2009). The study of commercial, population, social, and cultural exchanges between the three continents that surround the Atlantic Ocean consolidated this concept, without forgetting all the islands contiguous to these continents and in that ocean. The importance of archipelagos and islands has long been emphasised by historians such as Braudel (1949), Chaunu (1983), Magalhães Godinho (1981) and Bernard Bailyn (2005). Hence, the natural emergence of Island Studies. With the Mediterranean and Atlantic islands, particularly those of Macaronesia (which includes Cape Verde, the Canary Islands, Madeira and the Azores), the Atlantic nature of countries such as Portugal was reinforced and the borders of the European continent were extended. In the words of Valente (2011), European identity presupposes ‘several Europes’, one of which is maritime, insular and ultra-peripheral. However, despite sharing common features with the European matrix, geographical isolation is a variable that influences physical and social events (Baldachino, 2003), which is why archipelagic regions have their own idiosyncrasies.
This lecture, situated at the intersection between Atlantic History and Island Studies, aims to explain how the Portuguese islands of the Azores, located in the middle of the North Atlantic, were and are paradigmatic for the role they played throughout the Modern period, and especially the Contemporary period, in the oceanic ecosystem, in intercontinental relations, as well as in the construction of Atlantic identity, through migration, trade, whaling, geostrategy, culture and the arts. The ‘universality of the Azores’ is part of the processes of attraction, learning and assimilation associated with dissemination and diffusion. It is these crossroads that we will seek to address.
Bio: PhD in Contemporary History. Associate Professor at the School of Social and Human Sciences, University of the Azores. Researcher at CHAM Açores – Centre for Humanities (FCSH – New University of Lisbon/University of the Azores); Coordinator of the CHAM Açores – Centre for Humanities; Coordinator of the Doctorate in Insular and Atlantic History (15th-20th Centuries); Coordinator of the International Doctorate in Atlantic Islands: History, Heritage and Legal-Institutional Framework.
Wykład będzie prowadzony w języku angielskim.
