Digital Humanities and Historical Investigation in Portugal: perspective and discourse (1979-2015)

Abstract

Influenced by the recent international tendency towards the consolidation of the disciplinary area known as Digital Humanities, in the last few years Portuguese academia has undergone a movement of renewal of the discourse about digital technologies in research, teaching and dissemination of humanities. Taking a long-term perspective on the ties between History and digital methodologies, this article discusses, on the one hand, the novelty of such discourse, presenting it as a renewed and reworked practice that, in some cases, harkens back to the 1980s. On the other hand, the article addresses the fact that this renewal, unlike what is happening in the Anglo-Saxon world, is developing in a relatively modest way and without a significant institutional framework. Nevertheless, empirical data from recent years, especially since 2010 shows that Digital Humanities have managed to congregate a growing and increasingly prominent research community.