Over the past 40 years, the Department of History of Art has formed hundreds of graduate and post-graduate students and played a pioneer role in Portugal in the progress of this discipline. Recently, other fields of knowledge such as Museum Studies and Heritage Sciences have been associated to our main focus.
Encompassing the renewal of the Bologna Process at an European level, the Department of History of Art offers three cycles of studies: a degree comprising six semesters; a Master's degree of four semesters; and a Ph.D of eight semesters. Covering the different historical periods, from Antiquity to the Contemporary, and both Portuguese and international art, the course units that structure the various levels of study also include Theory, Methodology and Aesthetics, providing cross-cutting approaches. The goal to be achieved is thus to provide a comprehensive training, the guidance towards a critical discourse supported by a sound knowledge on the very identity of the discipline, and to allow a first contact with future work possibilities.
The intention in providing the students, together with a theoretical knowledge, the possibility to experience and to contact with the professional world led the Department of History of Art to sign cooperation protocols for conducting professional internships with a set of institutions, such as the DGPC (the Portuguese General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums, Town Halls (Sintra, Lisbon, Oporto), cultural institutions (Culturgest, Centro Cultural de Belém, Patriarchate of Lisbon, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Medeiros e Almeida Foundation, Cabral Moncada Leilões, etc..)
Similarly, through the Erasmus program students, teachers and researchers from different European universities have been given the opportunity to take advantage from valuable experiences.