Discourses of Eugenic Science in Portugal 1900- 1950

Fellowship

Project Team:

Principal Investigator:

Dr Richard Clemison, University of Leeds

Image credit: A decade of progress in Eugenics. Scientific papers of the Third International Congress of Eugenics held at American Museum of Natural History, New York, August 21-23, 1932. © Wellcome Library, London.

Award Information:

This project, funded by the AHRC between 2011 and 2012, sought to account for the historical uptake and reception of ideas on eugenics within Portugal from 1900 up to 1960. The early reverberations of eugenics were located within the field of medical and psychiatric science and their reception up 1960 was traced in colonial discourse on race and miscegenation. The fate of eugenics in Portugal was understood within the context of a strong Catholic Church, the dictatorship of António Salazar and the international context in which discourses on the subject were articulated.

A monograph on the history of eugenics in Portugal is currently under consideration by a major European press for publication.

Project dates: October 2011- June 2012