http://elea.unisa.it/xmlui/handle/10556/4878 2026-05-09T10:59:25Z http://elea.unisa.it/xmlui/handle/10556/9247 Public History IT. Numero 11 - Gennaio 2026 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z http://elea.unisa.it/xmlui/handle/10556/9158 Towards a Public Architectural History: Collective-Use Facilities and Community Engagement in Portugal and Spain Agarez, Ricardo Costa < DINÂMIA’CET-Iscte, Centre for Socioeconomic and Territorial Studies, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Av. das Forças Armadas, 1649-026, Lisbon, Portugal>; Pascoal, Ana Mehnert <DINÂMIA’CET-Iscte, Centre for Socioeconomic and Territorial Studies, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Av. das Forças Armadas, 1649-026, Lisbon, Portugal>; Herrera-Pineda, Ivonne <DINÂMIA’CET-Iscte, Centre for Socioeconomic and Territorial Studies, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Av. das Forças Armadas, 1649-026, Lisbon, Portugal> The sustained use and reuse of existing buildings is key in addressing social inequality and reinforcing sustainability and resilience in peripheral, disadvantaged communities of the so-called developed world. Collective-use facilities built since the 1940s, the outcome of individual and common efforts, carry decades of service to communities and are repositories of both material and experiential values. Knowing their history of production and use is essential in reassessing their relevance for current and future needs: to be effective, this knowledge must be appropriable and relatable, co-created, and widely shared. This article discusses how such premises are put to the test in Arquitectura Aqui, a research and dissemination initiative underway in communities in Portugal and Spain. Using different cases in both countries to examine specific goals and methodologies, challenges and results, we suggest that local engagement in co-researching and co-narrating the past and present of buildings and their role in collective life, in a participation and dissemination platform, might contribute to putting into practice a public architectural history of community buildings. 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z http://elea.unisa.it/xmlui/handle/10556/9157 Conservative Public History: Special Section Introduction Bauer, Caroline Silveira <History, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, 90040-060, Brazil>; Decker, Tunde <History, Osun State University, Osogbo, Nigeria>; de Groot, Jerome <EACW, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK>; Perry, Jimena <History, Iona University, New Rochelle, NY, USA> 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z http://elea.unisa.it/xmlui/handle/10556/9156 Conservative Public History in India Sharma, Shalini <Senior Lecturer in South Asian History, Keele University, Newcastle-under-Lyme, England> This article explores the conservative turn in India’s public history, examining its shift from a pluralistic, regionally grounded tradition to a centralized, ideologically driven narrative under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Since 2014, public history has been increasingly reframed through the lens of Hindutva nationalism, marginalizing minority voices and emphasizing a singular Hindu civilizational past. This “saffronization” is reflected in curriculum reforms, state-sponsored monuments, and the commercialization of heritage. Through examples such as the Ram Mandir, the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor, and corporatesponsored heritage sites, the paper shows how historical memory is being curated to support a narrow ideological project. Despite this, pluralist initiatives persist at the community level, including grassroots archives, urban heritage walks, and NGO-supported preservation efforts. These offer critical counter-narratives and underscore the ongoing contestation over India’s past. The paper argues that public history in India has become a terrain of political struggle, where historical representation is deeply entwined with questions of democracy, identity, and power. 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z