Making history during dictatorships

As a continuation of the first seminar that took place in Lisbon in May 2017, we want to continue the reflection started with a new meeting focused on the writing of history during dictatorial regimes. After a colloquium focused more on the Iberian dictatorships of Franco and Salazar, our aim is to enrich the subject with an ideological, geographical and chronological perspective extended to other societies affected by the dictatorial experiences that were so significant in the history of the 20th century.

How did dictatorial regimes seek to define a memorial policy and which is its implication in the writing of history? How did research and educational institutions react to the new political reality and how did they combine it with the values and practices that tended to consolidate history in the field of scientific knowledge? What consequences the dictatorships have had in the way historians have conceived their relationship with the public space and the present time? What contribution has the emigration of historians who opposed or were persecuted made to the reconfiguration of transnational academic relations and to disseminating different historiographic trends?

Although these questions are relevant to each national reality, we believe that the different historiographic, political and cultural contexts have produced different answers and nuances in relation to the issues raised, which is why we will favour comparative approaches that will give us a richer and more complex understanding of the conditions of history writing during dictatorships.