Code   .  2023.12750.PEX

Start   .   2025

Duration   .   18 meses

Principal Investigator   .   Nina Vieira (CHAM)

Institutions

Funding Entity

Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia

Research Unit

CHAM — Centre for the Humanities

Coordinating Institution

Partnerships

The project Animals of Lisbon (ANIMALx) aims at researching the presence and role of non- human animals in the city’s history by identifying, cataloguing, and mapping traces, spaces, and representations of animals. This will be the first systematic approach to historical human- animal relations in the city of Lisbon, aiming to fill a gap in Portuguese historiography and academia. It is grounded on animal history, environmental history, and urban history, with a crucial digital humanities component.

Engaging with recent studies that suggest an 'animal turn' in social sciences and humanities, this project aligns with the an effort to shift the focus of historical narratives from humans and their presumed exceptionalism, recognising the relevance of non-human animals for human societies - as sources of food, labour, diseases, raw materials and commodities, as objects of fear and wonder, and as cultural symbols and emblems. The ANIMALx project will place animals in urban history, arguing for their role in the history of cities and urban societies in a shared, multispecies environment.

To achieve the project's overarching goal, 5 specific objectives have been formulated:

● identifying and mapping the presence of animals in the urban space from historical sources;

● recording and mapping animals’ representations in the city’s landscape and museum collections;

● analysing the evolution of animal spaces and how human-animal relations operated and determined transformations in the urban landscape;

● encouraging society and academia to rethink Lisbon, placing animals as relevant co- constructors of the city’s history and heritage;

● setting a methodology for mapping the historical traces of animals in urban landscapes and communicating urban animal history to society and different stakeholders.

The core of the project lies in searching for:

1) Animal Places in written, iconographic and cartographic sources, and in the most relevant studies on Lisbon’s history and urbanism, from the 12th century to the end of the 18th century. The team will be looking for traces of living and preserved animals and their byproducts, as well as for references to physical structures associated with their presence, the uses they served for humans and the multiple functions they played in the socio-economic and cultural dynamics of the city.

2) Animal Representations in the urban landscape and heritage. This survey will be conducted through organised field missions and a systematic analysis of the Museum of Lisbon collections. The collected data will allow us to identify the represented animals and the meanings and contexts of these representations. Data will also be gathered through a Citizen Science Action in which users will identify and record animal-related heritage and contribute to its assessment. This will also foster public participation and direct engagement with the project and the theme, following UNESCO's recommendations on empowering local communities to contribute to knowledge production about the cultural and natural values of the city.

The results of the project will be presented in a final exhibition at Museum of Lisbon.

Nina Vieira (CHAM)   .   Principal investigator

Carla Vieira (CHAM)   .   Coordinator

Catarina Simões (CHAM)   .   Coordinator

Researchers

Ana Alcântara (ESE/IPS; Lab_HD, IHC - NOVA FCSH)

Hélia Silva (GEO - CML; IHA - NOVA FCSH)

Manuel Fialho da Silva (CH - FLUL)

Patrícia Carvalho (CHAM)

Paulo Almeida Fernandes (Museum of Lisbon; IHA - NOVA FCSH)

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Consultors

Cristina Brito (CHAM)

Daniel Alves (DH_Lab, IHC - NOVA FCSH)

Regina Horta Duarte (Federal University of Minas Gerais)