Comments: José Manuel Mendes (CES)


About

The reverberation of the global protests denouncing racism in 2020 at the level of European political and institutional discourses has highlighted the need not only to reconsider the teaching of colonial history in different contexts, but also to acknowledge the difficulty in reversing the silence on racism in Europe. This presentation first aims to map and analyse the most recent policy guidelines and institutional initiatives on race and racism in the field of history education at the level of the most relevant European organisations. On the basis of research on history teaching in Portugal, we will then examine the various conceptual frameworks mobilized to address race and racism in the most recent textbooks of the 3rd cycle of basic education. These will be discussed in relation to the broader socio-political context in which public debates on (post)colonial history and memory, national identity, and contemporary racism have been taking place.


Bio note

Marta Araújo | Principal Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra (CES). Her research addresses two complimentary lines of enquiry: i) public policy, political discourse, and ethno-racial discrimination; ii) history education and knowledge production, focusing on the teaching and the public history of (anti-)colonialism and enslavement. Marta is Vice-President of the Scientific Board at CES, where she co-coordinates the PhD Programme 'Democracy in the 21st Century' (CES/FEUC) and lectures at doctoral level ('Democracy in the 21st Century', 'Human Rights in Contemporary Societies'). Recently, she was Visiting Researcher at the Centre for Research on Ethnic Relations and Nationalism (CEREN) at the University of Helsinki. Currently in the Editorial Board of publications in the sociology of 'race' and education in Brazil, Britain, Portugal and the United States, she has published internationally in reputed peer-reviewed journals (e.g. British Journal of Sociology of Education, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Patterns of Prejudice, and 'Race', Ethnicity and Education). She has acted as scientific advisor on ethno-racial equality and participated in selected expert meetings at national and international level. She has also been actively engaged in outreach activities.