On Wednesday 4 and Thursday 5 February, the closing conference was held with the cycle Archives, research and scientific heritage: a view from the history of sciences organised by Francesca Antonelli, Ximo Guillem-Llobat and Luz Narbona. The conference brought together historians, archivists and museum and heritage professionals and was held at the López Piñero-UV Interuniversity Institute.

The inaugural seminar on Wednesday was given by Jaume Sastre, professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, who presented Catalunya, la fàbrica d'Espanya. Dr. Sastre analyzed the political uses of the industrial past, focusing on the exhibition Catalunya, la fàbrica d'Espanya, taking it as a cultural laboratory where historical narratives with political effects were constructed. The exhibition not only disseminated knowledge but also aimed to create a historical reality, the central idea being that Catalonia was the engine of the industrialization of Spain. For the exhibition, not only objects and documents were selected, but statistics, maps and dissemination texts were researched and synthesized an interpretation of what the industrialization process was from a nationalist perspective. Sastre explained that the exhibition argued that the industrial revolution had failed in Spain, but had triumphed in Catalonia thanks to the entrepreneurial spirit of the Catalan bourgeoisie. The effects of this exhibition transcended the space of museums. What they wanted to show was transmitted and disseminated through catalogues, educational materials, through the media and political speeches, which led to the establishment of a consensual interpretative framework on Catalan industrialisation. That is why the exhibition is an example of how institutional public history analyzes the past, actively shapes it, and establishes the boundaries of the historical and political debate on industrialization, national identity, and modernity today.

On Thursday 5th, the conference was divided into two thematic sections in the morning, the first dedicated to public history and museums and the second to public history and archives.

The first speaker was María Ángeles Calabuch, who presented the operation and objectives of the Museu de la Paraula de Banyeres de Mariola, which is located in a municipality in the interior of the province of Alicante. He explained oral memory, which becomes something historical so that no history is lost. This museum has 4 strategic objectives, one of them is to prevent the loss of intangible heritage and create a public audiovisual archive. The museum's projects are generally adapted for the elderly, around 70 years old, however one of the latest projects has focused on including young people. The museum's mission is to preserve and disseminate collective memory and remember that every story matters and is part of the collective story. For the museum, preserving these stories through oral history is sowing the seeds of the future. Next, José María Candela, presented some exhibitions of L'ETNO, Valencian Museum of Ethnology. It is a museum dedicated to the dissemination and conservation of Valencian culture founded in 1982. The idea of the museum comes from moving from the traditional museum to the social museum. The ethnology museum seeks to tell the story of the past and thus reflect on what is happening contemporaneously. It is a space for reflection, the generation of critical thinking and establishing past and present dialogue, wanting to address aspects of the past that are uncomfortable and difficult to assume. One of the most successful exhibitions has been to show the introduction of Francoism into people's daily lives through everyday objects. Another of his important exhibitions is called 228 Paterna.  The aim was to show how the relatives of the 2282 people shot in the post-war period in Paterna, preserved the memory of their loved ones through their objects. It was also shown how the recovery of the graves has made it possible to exhume the bodies of those shot but also their clothes and some personal belongings that allow us to recover more data about them and their lives. The cycle was continued by Anyely Marín, from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He presented the paper False friends around the Museu Etnològic i de Cultures del Mòn. He spoke about the two venues of the museum that separate the ethnological part and cultures of the world. At the Monjuïc headquarters there is the ethnological part related to Catalan culture with the preservation and exhibition of many objects. The Moncada headquarters has the museum of world cultures, reflected in four rooms: Oceania, Africa, America and Asia. In these rooms they tell the world, however, the part of Europe is missing, possibly because of a Eurocentric vision. According to Dr. Marín, this part of the museum has many problems in terms of museology and teaching. Conducting research, she and her collaborators understood that there is a lack of stories in the objects about their history and where they came from. He showed some research done on the importance of decolonization in this museum and how it would be important to talk about the history of the exhibitions, the objects and where they came from, to recover their scientific quality by historicizing the collections it has.

Elena Musiani, a researcher at the University of Bologna, then spoke. I present the archive of women's history in Bologna, which was inaugurated in June 2007, after a work of reorganization of the documentation provided by the women's documentation center in Bologna and the Orlando association. Paper files are preserved, as well as an audio and visual file. The inventories can be consulted on two online platforms: Archivi ER which is the information system for historical archives in Emilia-Romagna and Città degli Archivi. The story told by these documents is the history of the women's political movement. The idea is to put the female intelligentsia at the center to build a space for knowledge and theoretical production. Next up was Sara Di Giovanni, from the Centro di Documentazione Flavia Madaschi in Bologna. He presented Activism in the archive, new narratives and digital strategy to value LGBTQ+ history. In 1982 a headquarters was obtained in the "Cassero di Porta Saragozza", which was a space not to discriminate against the gay community of the time, which in those years was totally male. That community decides to work from culture and focuses on how to help people in the community with day-to-day social difficulties. That is why a documentation of the heritage and cultural production of the LGBT+ movement and people was carried out. For them, memory means preserving and protecting histories that are marginalized. Di Giovanni explained that, by valuing the past, new political positions can be built for the future. The archive has thousands of documents and photographic images, as well as works of art, films, diaries and correspondence. Pablo Hernández, former director of the memory closet of Valencia, then spoke. She explained her 4-year experience participating in the creation and management of the LGTBIQ+ archive of democratic memory in the Valencian Community, a public project started at the end of 2021 and which was managed through an agreement with a social entity, which was considered innovative as it combined institutional legitimacy and community participation. This archive was a public service of LGTBIQ+ memory, with documentary materials, outreach activities and work with the community. In 2025, the Generalitat Valenciana decided not to renew the agreement and to take over the service directly. The archive is still active but has possibly been very weakened. The mixed model between the public and the social entity was very positive despite the fact that it also generated internal tensions. The project shows the importance of institutions assuming these memories as part of the collective history, although their continuity will depend on political will. Despite everything, the experience for Pablo Hernández was very positive.

The closing seminar was given by Dr. María Montenegro, professor at the University of California. He presented "When Archives Are Not Enough: Affect, Evidence, and Anticolonial Temporalities in Politics of Recognition and Territory."

Dr. Montenegro analyzed how state archives and Chilean and U.S. colonial laws function as tools of territorial and cultural dispossession for indigenous peoples. Through the archives, she examined the obstacles faced by indigenous communities, as they are forced to prove their identity through documents originally designed to eliminate and forget them. He explained the violence of official institutions and proposed a paradigm shift, where communities can manage their own stories, traditional knowledge and access protocols. He ended the conference, emphasizing that in order to obtain true decolonialization, it is necessary to validate indigenous epistemologies and return the territory to its original nations.

Recording of María's Montenegro seminar: Link to the seminar recording

Ivania Maturana, extracurricular internship student of the Interuniversity Master's Degree in History and Communication of Science