Marie-Thérèse Cécile Lévêque e o Instituto de Serviço Social (1935-1946). História e Memória

This thesis analyses the history of emergence and institutionalization of social work in Portugal, through the creation of the Instituto de Serviço Social (ISS), in Lisbon. The adopted analytical perspective intends to bring, simultaneously, attention to historical dynamics that crossed and characterized Portuguese society at the 1930s and 1940s, with the more specific issues related to social work's teaching and professionalization in Europe and worldwide. Special attention was given to some individual actors and their role at the ongoing processes of social work's institutionalization, with emphasis on Marie-Thérèse Cécile Lévêque, the academic head of that Institute, between 1935 and 1946. The historical sources that support this study were gathered through research carried out in archives, documentation centres and other archival repository places, spread across Portugal and several European countries, and was enriched with the oral testimony of a social worker who was part of the first ISS students´ group. The developed research allowed to reveal the inconsistencies and mismatches at the Estado Novo political context and its normative framework, opening up spaces of autonomy for thinking and acting strategies by some historical agents at the social work field under construction in Portugal, namely coming from social Catholicism.