The Centre of Religious History Studies / Centro de Estudos de História Religiosa (CEHR) is, since 1988, an organic unit from the Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP), continuing a work initiated by some individual researchers in 1956. With its current objectives and in its present configuration as a R&D unit, the Centre and its activities have been regularly evaluated by FCT since 2002. With a national dimension, the CEHR has its headquarters in Lisbon and a branch in the UCP´s regional centre in Porto, with affiliated members from all the major public universities.

Its main objective is to contribute to the study of the social phenomena and dynamics from the point of view of their religious articulations, inscribed in the Portuguese historical space, bearing in mind the different locations of the religion, the actors´ categories and the complexity of the several contexts, thus contributing to the historical understanding of societies.

Under its specialization in religious history, CEHR develops a working partnership with other national and foreign research centers, resulting in multiple achievements, as in the creation and management of several proposals in the field of postgraduate training. Notably: the management of the Interuniversity Doctoral Programme in History (PIUDHist), an FCT doctoral programme; the collaboration with the Master and PhD programmes on History and Culture of Religions, in the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa (FLUL); teaching in the Integrated Theology Master and in the Religious Studies Master, both from the Faculdade de Teologia da Universidade Católica Portuguesa.

CEHR is directly responsible for the following institutional research dynamics: the edition of Lusitania Sacra, a peer-reviewed journal specialized in religious history, with international circulation and referenced in several databases, namely Scopus; the print and digital edition of two editorial collections: Estudos de História Religiosa and História Religiosa: Fontes e Subsídios; the on-line edition of the collection Instrumentos de Descrição Documental; the maintenance of the Portal de História Religiosa which includes a Platform of Archives (PAPIR) both in open access. This set of instruments seeks to attain a double objective: to provide the means to spread the work and disseminate the knowledge produced by CEHR´s researchers; and, in a wider scale, to contribute to potentiate and define the research developed in the religious history field in Portugal, with particular attention to its inscription in the international historiographic debates.

 

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Following the institutional evaluation process cyclically held by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), CEHR was visited by the International Evaluation Panel “Arts and Humanities – History and Archaeology”, on the 23rd May 2019. In that context, the Centre brought forward its Evaluation concerning the previous period and its Strategical Project for 2018-2022 through a presentation video:

 

   

Some pictures of the workroom where the meeting took place are also available.