11th Conference CITCEM – 25th to 27th November 2026
Communities of Knowledge: Practices, Circulations and Transmissions
CITCEM invites national and international researchers from across the world and from multiple disciplinary fields to reflect on the role of communities as spaces for the creation, transmission, and transformation of knowledge over time. This approach arises from ongoing discussions about the priorities of knowledge, its application, and its practices. Over time, who holds the power to determine the relevance and legitimacy of scientific production?
The 11th CITCEM Conference is embedded within this broad conceptual framework and welcomes theoretical reflections and case studies that adopt comparative, diachronic, and multidisciplinary perspectives. We encourage contributions that bring different territories, epistemic traditions, and temporalities into dialogue, that value non-hegemonic practices, and that challenge narratives centred on dominant knowledge models.
This conference seeks to explore how different communities – local, Indigenous, religious, professional, digital, academic, or transnational – construct and share memories and knowledge within diverse cultural, political, and historical contexts. It therefore asks: how do communities function as collective spaces of knowledge? What processes, practices, and forms of interaction enable this production of knowledge? To what extent does the analysis of the construction of formal and informal knowledge spaces contribute to understanding, creating, and communicating knowledge?
This plurality of approaches requires consideration of both institutional forms (schools, houses of knowledge, places of worship, libraries, archives, laboratories, workshops) and informal or experiential forms, including oral traditions, everyday practices, family networks, professional environments, ritual sociabilities, community participation, and experience‑based knowledge ecologies.
From a long‑term perspective, it is essential to understand how knowledge circulates through mobilities, encounters, trade routes, diasporas, colonial and post‑colonial processes, and migrations (forced or voluntary), as well as through technological or ritual mediations, generating hybridisations, tensions, or new forms of legitimation. Likewise, it is imperative to consider the power regimes that shape the visibility, transmission, and status of different types of knowledge.
About the event
The CITCEM Annual Conference has been held since 2010, as one of the first recurring major events since the founding of the Research Centre, in 2007. The Conference’s central objective is the sharing of plural knowledge generated by Portuguese and international scientific communities, with particular attention to diverse and transdisciplinary themes.
Previous editions covered the following themes:
2010 – 1st CITCEM Conference: Family, Space and Heritage (I Encontro CITCEM: Família, Espaço e Património)
2011 – 2nd CITCEM Conference: The Ocean. Heritage, Uses and Representations (II Encontro CITCEM: O MAR. Patrimónios, Usos e Representações)
2013 – 3rd CITCEM Conference: Landscape (III Encontro CITCEM: Paisagem)
2015 – 4th CITCEM Conference: Crossing Borders, Connecting the Margins of Environmental History (IV Encontro CITCEM: Cruzar Fronteiras, Ligar as Margens da História Ambiental)
2016 – 5th CITCEM Conference: Lines and Letters: Epistolography and Memory of Written Culture (V Encontro CITCEM: As Linhas e as Letras: Epistolografia e Memória da cultura escrita)
2017 – 6th CITCEM Conference: My Mistakes, Our Fortunes (VI Encontro CITCEM: Erros Meus, Fortuna Nossa)
2018 – 7th CITCEM Conference: Mobilities (VII Encontro CITCEM: Mobilidades)
2019 – 8th CITCEM Conference: In Times of War… (VIII Encontro CITCEM: Em Tempos de Guerra…)
2020 – 9th CITCEM Conference: The Construction of Liberty/ies – Comemorative Congress of the Bicentenary of the Liberal Revolution of 1820 (IX Encontro CITCEM: A Construção da(s) Liberdade(s) – Congresso Internacional Comemorativo do Bicentenário da Revolução Liberal de 1820)
Organising Committee
Scientific Commission
Alexandra Bounia – University of the Aegean, Greece
Amélia Polónia – CITCEM/FLUP
Ana Carolina de O. Hosne Universidade Nacional de Sam Martin, Argentina
Andreia Arezes – CITCEM/FLUP
António Camões Gouveia
Carla Sequeira – CITCEM/FLUP
Cláudia Pinto Ribeiro – CITCEM/FLUP
Elvira García de Torres, Universidad Cardenal Herrera, Valencia, Espanha
Fernando Zamith – CITCEM/FLUP
Flocel Sabaté i Curull – Universidad de Lleida, Espanha
Francisco Noa Academia das Ciências de Lisboa
Francisco Topa – CITCEM/FLUP
George Leal Jamil – Fundação Dom Cabral, Brasil
Hugo Barreira – CITCEM/FLUP
João Luís Fontes – U.NOVA FCSH
Jorge Revez – Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa
José Manuel Sobral – ICS – ULisboa
José María Cuenca-López – Universidad de Huelva: Huelva, Andalucía
Leonor Botelho – CITCEM/FLUP
Lisbeth Rodrigues – CITCEM/FLUP
Marcus Hall – Institute of Environmental Sciences, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Maria de Fátima Marinho – CITCEM/FLUP
Maria João Oliveira e Silva – CITCEM/FLUP
Mário Jorge Barroca – CITCEM/FLUP
Paula Almeida Mendes – CITCEM/FLUP
Paula Menino Homem – CITCEM/FLUP
Ricardo Morais – CITCEM/FLUP
Sara Albuquerque – Universidade de Évora
Solange Fiuza Yokosawa – Universidade Federal de Goiás, Brazil
Walter Rossa – Universidade de Coimbra
Zulmira Santos – CITCEM/FLUP
CITCEM
Founded in 2007, CITCEM is a Research & Development (R&D) Unit based at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto. Anchored in the wider field of the humanities and social sciences, CITCEM operates as a transdisciplinary research platform, exploring the close connections between several disciplines, such as history, archaeology, art history, cultural and literary studies, demography, information, communication and heritage sciences, amongst others.
Briefly put, CITCEM focuses on the transdisciplinary study of memory and heritage themes in connection with the evolving interactive construction of economic, social, political, cultural and territorial identities and spaces, with a particular but not exclusive emphasis on North-western Portugal. This focus encompasses the study of identitary memories, cultural heritage in its material and immaterial forms, environmental history, rural and urban landscapes, population mobility, religious practices, and other associated research topics.
CITCEM currently comprises over 400 researchers, a number which includes both integrated and collaborating members. This is a highly-skilled, multi-layered and motivated transdisciplinary team, working towards the mature operations of a Centre which has just completed a decade of successful functioning.
From its inception, CITCEM has been working in close partnership with local authorities, independent institutions and interested parties in general, building strong regional ties which have managed to catalyse further successful national and international collaborations. Drawing upon this solid track record of regional impact and cooperation, and in close contact with policy makers and independent promoters, CITCEM remains fully committed to continuing to foster meaningful engagements between state-of-the-art academic research and local communities.
Consequently, CITCEM aims to retain and expand its fundamental role in the wide-reaching dialogue taking place in North-western Portugal and beyond about the future of the region and its wider links with the overall country and internationally. As a dynamic partner in this dialogue, the Centre is committed to offering vital, interdisciplinary and trans-national contributions from the humanities and social sciences into finding positive responses to the region’s present and future challenges, in close alignment with the priorities of the H2030 Agenda.