Elisa Lopes da Silva is a junior researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History (FCSH-NOVA University of Lisbon), where she coordinates the research group Economy and Society. She researches in the fields of history of the state, agricultural history and labour history, combining theoretical concerns from governmentality studies and critical history. Since 2023, she is working on her FCT-funded individual project "Out of Work: a critical history of unemployment in Portugal, 1890s-1970s" , which looks at the relationship between state categories and policies, cultural representations and the everyday experiences of (not) working, crossing conceptual history approaches with oral history methods. This project was based on her previous published research (2022) on the meanings, negotiations and disputes on the categories of "unemployment" and "unemployed", analised as a problematic of government. She holds a PhD in History [Change and continuity in a global world ] (2020), awarded at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, and a Master degree in Contemporary History (2011). Her doctoral thesis focused on the history of internal colonisation and agricultural colonies during Estado Novo, revealing the intertwined relations between state powers, agricultural doctrines and policies and epistemic domains. The revised version of her PhD, titled "Colonising the Metropole. State, politics and techniques of internal colonisation in 20th century", is in press at the academic publisher Imprensa de Ciências Sociais (2024). From 2021 to 2023, she joined as postdoctoral researcher the multi-disciplinary team of the H2020 project COESO (Collaborative Engagement on Societal Issues), which aimed to facilitate and support participatory research in SSH. In this project, she co-coordinated the implementation of ten Citizen Science pilots presenting a variety of disciplines, societal challenges and types of engagement with citizens in five European countries. As researcher, she developed collaborative research with environmentalist NGO ZERO - Association for the Sustainability of the Earth System to study the recent urban transformations and tourism in Lisbon, combining approaches from social history, oral history and visual ethnography. From 2019 to 2021, she was editorial coordinator at the Institute of Contemporary History, where she managed both the Imprensa de História Contemporânea [Contemporary History Press] and Práticas da História. Journal on Theory, Historiography and Uses of the Past, which she co-founded in 2015. She continues to be in the Editorial Boards of both publications and participating in discussions on policies of academic publishing, including Open Access. She has written 1 monograph, 4 book chapters, presented 13 papers, edited 1 Special Issue, co-edited a journal thematic dossier and conducted 4 published interviews.