Shared Heritage

We organize and host scientific events, in partnership with higher education institutions and research centres. We seek to explore the Foundation’s archive heritage to create scientific knowledge. We produce contents and resources for education and research.  

The Foundation, through the Archives, the Libraries and the João Soares Museum-House, protects, preserves and disseminates the heritage and the memory of freedom and democracy, with special reference to the documentation of Mário Soares and Maria Barroso, as well as many other archives that are critically important to the knowledge of Contemporary History.

The Foundation develops a regular activity, scheduled as a function of the organization and processing of the archives and collections under its custody. All information and contents are made available through the digital platform Casa Comum.

The Foundation holds more than 200 funds and collections related to different themes, namely republicanism, Military Dictatorship and the Estado Novo, colonialism and anti-colonialism, the opposition to dictatorship, the 25 April 1974, European construction, women and feminisms, literature, plastic arts, the environment and the oceans.

Activities and actions currently under way:

• Reorganization of the Mário Soares Archives, with special reference to the description and digitization of correspondence exchanged during the 1974-1978 period, as well as photographic collections.
• Organization, processing, description and digitization of the photographic archives related with the Portuguese Revolution, with a view to making public, in 2024, a set of more than 12,000 photographs, with special reference to the archives of Alfredo Cunha, Carlos Gil, Inácio Ludgero, Ingeborg Lippmann and Peter Collis.
• Association of the Foundation with the Centennial of Amílcar Cabral: supporting the application of Cabral’s writings to UNESCO’s Memory of the World program; re-digitization and dissemination of all writings by Amílcar Cabral.
• Digitization of the photograph collection and manuscripts of Amílcar Cabral that belong to his archives, in the framework of his Birth Centennial.
• Organization and processing of the document and photograph heritage of the Socialist Party.
• Provision of digital services in open access to the cultural heritage, with special reference to the permanent content updating by the digital platform Casa Comum.
• Provision of research guides and instruments for supporting consultation and discovery of the Foundation’s cultural heritage. These may help explore the archives and collections based on themes, subject-matters or topics, as defined by the Foundation’s team.
• Production of contents and active promotion of the Foundation’s document heritage, notably by means of the social media.

The Foundation organizes, promotes and sponsors debate activities, notably by means of conferences, seminars and colloquiums, in addition to other cultural, scientific and educational initiatives.

We specially value collaboration in the framework of partnerships, involving higher education and research institutions, as well as cultural institutions and organizations of civil society.

Activities and actions currently under way, or programmed:

• Co-operation with the Colonial Press Group of Studies, to organize the “International Congress on Press in the Exile". Collaborating with the Social History Archives and the 25 April Documentation Centre, we shall launch a directory listing all the Exile Press extant at the three institutions.
• Conferences and colloquiums in the framework of the Mário Soares Birth Centennial.
• Cycle of talks ‘The Heritage(s) of Democracy’, which aims to place archives as spaces for discussion on the present and future of democracy.
• Cycle of conferences on “Feminine Resistance”, organized by HTC/CFE-NOVA, with a view to reflecting and debating on different forms of resistance led by women, seeking to restore memories and testimonies of women who resisted oppression, discrimination and repression in different ways throughout the twentieth century.
• Cycle of talks on Amílcar Cabral, with a view to reflecting on the role played by Amílcar Cabral in the context of African nationalism and the contribution of his legacy to contemporary societies, based on documents from the cultural and political heritage of African intellectuals of Cabral’s Generation, extant in their archives.

Exhibition on Carlos Gil, on the 30th Anniversary of the attribution of the Gazeta Award.

• October 2024.
• Location: Casa da Imprensa.
• Initiative in partnership with the Journalists Club and the Press House.

Winds of Freedom. The April Revolution, through the eyes of Peter Collis and Ingeborg Lippmann

Exhibition with unpublished images by two foreign photojournalists - Ingeborg Lippmann e Peter Collis – who followed up the Revolution, documenting different events of Portugal’s political life and capturing the lives, the social conditions and the contexts that characterized that period.

• 2025.
• Location: Casa-Museu João Soares, Leiria.

Exhibition “Memory of April. Photographs by Mário Varela Gomes”

Exhibition on the April 1974 Revolution, based on photographs taken by Mário Varela Gomes on the 25 April and documents illustrating the way in which the United States of America accompanied the Revolution.

• November 2024 to January de 2025.
• Location: Library of the NOVA School of Science and Technology.

Exhibitions in the framework of the Mário Soares Birth Centenary

• Mário Soares: 100 years.
• Mário Soares. Portugal, which Revolution?
• The Salt of Democracy: Mário Soares and Culture.
• The Worlds of Soares.

See before you shoot. Revolutions in Latin America and Portugal through the lens of photojournalist Carlos Gil    

• Project financed by the Iberarquivos Programme.
• It includes the digitisation, description and provision of a set of photographs and texts by Carlos Gil, with special reference to the coverage of the revolutionary and post-revolutionary period in Latin America and Portugal (1974-1999).
• Under execution until February 2025.

"Ordinary Voices": organisation and study of the correspondence between citizens and Mário Soares during the transition to Portuguese democracy (1974-1978)

• Project financed by the Foundation for Science and Technology.
• Project aimed at organising, analysing and disseminating the correspondence exchanged between the citizens and Mário Soares, during the Revolution and the transition to Portuguese democracy, in 1974 to 1978.
• Under execution until March 2026.

Publishing projects regarding the History of the Socialist Party’s Parliamentary Group

• The 25 April at the Parliament: speeches delivered by the Socialist Party’s Parliamentary Group on the Day of Freedom.
• History of the Socialist Party’s Parliamentary Group (1975-2025).

Unarchiving Democracy

• Educational Project on Democratic Citizenship, based on the archives of The Mário Soares and Maria Barroso Foundation, with a digital presence through the Foundation’s Instagram.

Collaboration with the National Printing House and Mint (INCM), in the framework of the editorial project "Collection “Works by Mário Soares" (Obras de Mário Soares).

• Vol. 0 – The Political and Social Ideas of Teófilo Braga ("As Ideias Políticas e Sociais de Teófilo Braga")
• Vol. 1 – Gagged Portugal (2 vols.) ("Portugal Amordaçado")
• Vol. 2 – History told with Maria João Avillez (2 vols.) ("A História Contada com Maria João Avillez")

Publications in the framework of the Mário Soares Birth Centenary.

• Mário Soares: On the Freedom Road "(Mário Soares: No Caminho da Liberdade). Text by Luísa Ducla Soares and Illustration by Susana Carvalhinhos. A report on the life pathway and values of Mário Soares, aimed at students of the Elementary School (1st cycle).
• Biography of Mário Soares.

Publications in the framework of conferences and debates

• Media and Journalism at times of Dictatorship. Censorship, Repression and Resistance.
• Media and and Democratic Transitions in Catalunya and Portugal (in print).
• Newspapers in April (programmed).
• The Socialist Party Outdoor Posters (programmed).

The Mário Soares-Fundação EDP Award is granted to the authors of academic dissertations, or other research works, covering the History of Portugal in the Twentieth Century.

The thematic area of the Award also includes works in the field of social sciences, arts and humanities aimed at studying Portugal’s historical reality in the twentieth century.

Applications of national and foreign authors with up to 35 years old will be accepted.