Postgraduate Course in Historical Archivistics

Education objectives

The Post-Graduation in Historical Archivistics offers theoretical and practical training in an innovative and emerging field of knowledge that promotes an interdisciplinary approach between History, Information Science and Archival Science. It seeks to create a common, innovative and unparalleled field of study in other higher education institutions in Portugal, based on three areas that are or have been affirming themselves as particularly strong at FCSH: History, Information Management and Curation, and Historical Archivistics. This field of study will make it possible to fill the void that is increasingly felt, of a dedicated training in archival science, but refusing to return to a traditional view of this knowledge: relating it to Information Science, while valuing the contributions of Social Sciences and Humanities, namely History. On the other hand, it will be particularly beneficial for trainees from the area of History, where archival literacy is underrepresented as a training area.
It should also be noted that the option to include Archival Science in the multidisciplinary matrix of the course follows the most recent international trends, where the “Archival Science” of Anglo-Saxon matrix is a field in thriving development, with directions as important as the relationship between archives and human rights, archives and gender and ethnic equality, archives and democracy, archives and identity - and with the important characteristic that, in all these fields, the historical perspective is highly valued.
In general terms, the main objective of this course is to train specialists in the acquisition and / or deepening of knowledge that provides them with the necessary tools to understand archives – understood as memory institutions and documentary sets – as complex social, political and cultural constructions that are organically linked the historical evolution of their producing entities.
The specific skills to be developed in the Post-Graduation in Historical Archivistics comprise the following aspects, among others:
- theory and methods of Historical Archivistics;
- basic theoretical and practical training in the treatment, description and retrieval of information;
- use of digital archives and archival description tools, with particular emphasis on the examples of Digital Humanities and the
promotion of open access, citizen history, participatory archives and the so-called web 2.0;
- reflection on current themes that focus on the role of archives in a post-colonial society that aims at being democratic,
transparent and inclusive, and on the alternatives to the public and state archival model, such as community archives;
- understanding of the historical evolution of the different types of archives (state, municipal, religious, family);
- archival research methodologies;
- practical application of the previous points in the study, treatment and description of family archives.