My Ph.D research project aims at writing the history of the Portuguese National Institute for Scientific Research (Instituto Nacional de Investigação Científica, INIC) (1976-92). Although INIC is an important institutional actor in the development of the Portuguese scientific system, it has been mostly absent from the history of the Portuguese institutions of science policy. INIC was founded after the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974 in a context in which institutional coordination of scientific research had already become a priority. The political instability of the post-revolutionary period, together with the expansion of the scientific system, resulted in institutional tensions and conflicts involving the scientific community, the higher education community, and other institutions tangent to INIC, that led to its extinction in 1992. Based on INIC’s archive and complemented by secondary sources and interviews, this project proposes to bring this institution into the historical narrative of the Portuguese institutions of science policy.
