Mindful journeys to a shared past: crafting History, engaging fellow citizens, co-creating informed and reflexive minds
Field_work_with_students_in_Ponte_de_Lima1@VINCULUM project’s team.jpg | Credits: VINCULUM project’s team
Field_work_with_students_in_Ponte_de_Lima2@VINCULUM project’s team.jpg | Credits: VINCULUM project’s team
Field_work_with_students_in_Ponte_de_Lima3@VINCULUM project’s team.jpg | Credits: VINCULUM project’s team
Secondary_schools_competion6@VINCULUM project’s team.JPG | Credits: VINCULUM project’s team
Secondary_schools_competion7@VINCULUM project’s team.JPG | Credits: @VINCULUM project’s team
VINCULUM Project (2019–2025), financed by the European Research Council (Conslodiator Grant), investigates Southern European institutions related to social organization between the 14th-17th centuries from a comparative perspective. At the core of the project is a large Open-Source, Open-Access database of historical records. Between 2022 and 2024, the project developed a structured citizen science initiative with 2 main components: “Educational program for secondary school students” & “Local History and heritage program”.
The “Educational program for secondary school students” was based on the educational value of discovering local heritage. Two pilot initiatives were defined: the competition "Cria vínculos com a História" and the students’ direct engagement in the citizen-science activity "Vínculos com (a) História".
The “Local History and heritage program” comprised 4 different activities that engaged local historians, cultural associations, municipal culture departments, and the general public: “Vinculum project days” & “Discovering your local entails and chapels”, full-day events with hand-on historical work; “Entail of the month”, small research texts by local historians and/or private archive owners, published monthly on the project’s website and compiled in a book; and "Vínculos com (a) História” (2024), which gathered c.1500 visitors in 4 days.
Beyond the tangible results, we highlight 3 key achievements: demonstrating the value of developing Citizen Science projects in History, particularly non-contemporary History, proving the relevance of studying distant pasts; proving to the academic community that citizen science activities can be successfully implemented within pure research projects; transforming participants’ perspectives on local history and genealogy, shifting from narrow or mythical interpretations to a broader, more complex understanding of the past, while also validating the importance of investing European research funds in such initiatives.
European Research Council
NOVA.FCSH
IHC – Instituto de História Contemporânea
IEM – Instituto de História Medieval
Secretaria Regional de Economia, Turismo e Cultura da Madeira
Municipalities of Alenquer, Ponte de Lima, Loulé
Parish of Machico, Madeira
Academia das Ciências de Lisboa
Associação dos Professores de História
ALENCULTA - Associação Cultural de Alenquer
Solares de Portugal/ TURIHAB
PATRIMONIUM – Gestão e Promoção de Bens Culturais
RTP’s Cultural program “Visita Guiada”
12 secondary schools (Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe)
Secondary School of Ponte de Lima
Owners of private historical archives
Maria de Lurdes Rosa is an historian, teacher at the History Department of NOVA.FCSH, Lisbon. In 2018, she received a Consolidator Grant from the ERC to carry out the project VINCULUM. Maria holds a PhD in Medieval History from the ÉHESS (Paris) / NOVA FCSH, an Habilitation in Medieval History and an Habilitation in Information. She has been a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton and a visiting professor at the École Nationale des Chartes. As a medievalist, she has worked extensively on the social relevance of her study field, teaching Citizen History and archival heritage protection.
VINCULUM research team included different types of researchers: M. Lurdes Rosa, PI; Post-doc researchers Ana Rita Rocha, Arthur Curvelo, Mário Farelo, Miguel Aguiar, Miguel Aires de Campos, Miguel Geraldes Rodrigues, Rita Sampaio da Nóvoa; M.A. Research fellows Abel Rodrigues, Mafalda Lopes, Fábio Duarte, Leonor Garcia, M. Teresa Oliveira, Rodolfo Petronilho Feio; Junior research fellow Pedro Câmara; Project managers and science communication officers Natacha Baptista; Ricardo Naito; Verónica Francisco; Research associates Joana Soares, Margarida Leme, Beatriz Merêncio, Pedro Pinto.
This project worked with secondary school students, owners of historic houses, scholars and local municipalities to digitally document historical records. The jury was impressed with the range of partners, and the ways in which the project focused on rural or marginalised students, who were taught to be history guides. The jury appreciated the range of outputs from the work, spanning tours of houses to a book and podcasts.