This keynote makes a compelling case for embedding historical methods at the core
of critical political economy, especially in media and communication research.
Arguing against the compartmentalisation of theory and method, it shows how
historical inquiry offers unique tools for understanding social structures, crises, and
transformations. From Marx’s pioneering use of factory inspector reports to today’s
global research on media concentration, history emerges as a battlefield of memory
and meaning-making. Archives, often seen as neutral repositories, are exposed as
sites of institutional power that shape whose stories are told and whose are forgotten.
Yet, within these constraints lies opportunity: archival work is detective work, capable
of challenging dominant ideologies and revealing suppressed narratives. The talk
advocates for a self-reflexive, methodologically rigorous and theoretically grounded
approach to history — one that acknowledges subjectivity, systemic inequality, and
the material limits of research. In times of rapid digital change and resurging
authoritarianism, historical methods offer not just analytical depth, but a political
imperative. History, in this frame, is not an academic afterthought but it is an
emancipatory practice.