This exhibition is both a celebration of queer history and a pedagogical invitation. It celebrates the diversity of LGBTQI+ histories across time, while also inviting visitors to reflect on how these histories are written, preserved, and transmitted.

Spanning from the Middle Ages to the present, the exhibition brings together works that explore sexual and gender dissidence across different historical moments. LGBTQI+ histories have long been marginalised, silenced, or erased from official historical narratives. Yet they persist — in books, archives, memories, life stories, and everyday acts of resistance.

By bringing together bibliographical references and voices from lived experience, this exhibition foregrounds LGBTQI+ history as something that is at once scholarly and deeply personal, local and transnational, past and present.

This exhibition brings together two complementary ways of engaging with LGBTQI+ history: through books and scholarship, and through life stories that carry embodied  knowledge. Scholarship gives structure and context to memory; life stories give texture, emotion, and voice to historical narratives. Together, they demonstrate how LGBTQI+ history is both written and lived.

At a time when LGBTQI+ Studies, experience and books are increasingly subject to censorship and political attack in different parts of the world, this exhibition also acts as an archive of resistance. It insists on the importance of remembering, preserving, and circulating these works.

Organised as part of LGBTQI+ History Month, this exhibition also marks an important institutional moment: the integration of Ana Cristina Santos and Pedro Fidalgo from the Centre for Social Studies (CES) into the International Committee on LGBTQ+ History Months founded by Rodney Wilson (USA) in 1994. This affiliation reflects a shared commitment to international dialogue, critical scholarship, and public engagement around LGBTQI+ histories.

Since 2023, CES has marked the month of February as LGBTQI+ History Month through public exhibitions and a series of science communication activities grounded in research on LGBTQI+ history, queer ageing, memory, and life courses. The 4th  LGBTQI+ History Month (2026) continues this trajectory, consolidating CES as a national reference in the recognition of LGBTQI+ History.

Evento de Inauguração
A inauguração da exposição terá lugar a 2 de fevereiro de 2026 às 16h na Biblioteca Norte|Sul do CES, com a participação de Ana Cristina Santos, Investigadora Principal do Projeto TRACE; Joana Brilhante, Coordenadora do GPS CES; Acácio Machado, Diretor da Biblioteca Norte|Sul do CES; e Rodney Wilson, fundador do Comité Internacional dos Meses da História LGBTQ+.

The exhibition will be launched on the 2nd February 2026, at 4pm, at the CES North|South Library, with the participation of Ana Cristina Santos, Principal Investigator of Project TRACE; Joana Brilhante, Coordinator of GPS CES - Sexualities Research Group; Acácio Machado, Head Librarian of the CES North|South Library; and Rodney Wilson, founder of the International Committee on LGBTQ+ History Months.
 

Organisation: Research project TRACE | Tracing Queer Citizenship over Time - Ageing, ageism and age-related LGBTI+ politics in Europe (ERC); CES North|South Library; GPS CES - Sexualities Research Group