Biography

Rui Bebiano is Retired Professor of Contemporary History at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and Senior Researcher at the Center of Social Studies, at University of Coimbra. Since 2011 he is also the director of 25 April Documentation Center. He has taught undergraduate and post-graduate courses in the areas of Modern and Contemporary Political and Cultural History and published extensively in academic journals, dictionaries of History, collections of essays and other academic publications as well as, since 1971, opinion articles and reviews in newspapers and magazines. In the 1980's he was part of the renewal of Baroque Studies in Portugal, having written "D. João V. Poder e Espectáculo" / "D. João V. Power and Display". He took a Phd in History of Ideas and his dissertation - "A Pena de Marte. Discurso da guerra em Portugal e na Europa entre os séculos XVI e XVIII" / "Mars' pen: The Discourse of War in Portugal in Europe between the XVI and the XVIII Centuries" - was the recipient of the Prémio de Defesa Nacional / National defense Award in the following year. He wrote essays for "História de Portugal" and "História Militar de Portugal", both published by Círculo de Leitores. He has also done work on the areas of the History of Reading and Ciberculture, having edited between 1996 and 2002 one of the first e-zines in Portuguese. "Folhas Voláteis" (2001), was the first volume of chronicles originally published on the web. Between 2007 and 2015 he had a monthly column in LER, a cultural and literary magazine. His current research and teaching areas are political and cultural history since the 1950's, particularly in the history of intellectuals and of ideas, representations of Utopia, and silencing and social exclusions in history and memory. "O Poder da Imaginação. Juventude, Rebeldia e Resistência nos Anos 60" / "The Power of Imagination. Youth, Rebellion and Resistance in the 1960's" was published in 2003, while "Anos Inquietos. Vozes do Movimento Estudantil em Coimbra (1961-1974)" / "Restless Years. Voices of the Coimbra Students' Movement (1961-1974)" (co-authorship with Manuela Cruzeiro) and "Do Activismo à Indiferença. Movimentos Estudantis em Coimbra" / "From Activism to Indifference" (co-authorship with Elísio Estanque) came out in 2007. Recent books are "Outubro"/ "October", on the imaginary and the symbolic impact of the 1917 Revolution; "Tony Judt - historiador e intelectual público" / "Tony Judt. Historian and Public Intellectual", a book on the political role of History with the life and works of the British historian at its center; and the just published "Labirinto de Outubro. Cem Anos de Revolução e Dissidência» / «The October Labyrinth: a Hundred Years of Revolution and Dissidence», a long essay on the impact of the 1917 Russian Revolution on the production of conflicts and alternatives in the context of a hundred years of socialism's history. He is on the Editorial Board of several academic journals and supervises many MA and PhD dissertations.