2024: Urban societies in medieval Europe

Throughout the Middle Ages, powers such as kings and princes favoured towns as centres for organising space on a political, socio-economic, religious and cultural level. Towns were the place of residence and often passage for individuals with different social statuses, levels of wealth and knowledge, and sometimes religious beliefs. Urban communities took centre stage in different areas, from politics to economics, and in the promotion, circulation and dissemination of religious and cultural ideas and practices.

The study of medieval urban societies continues to be important and necessary to understand their composition, inequalities and complexity, as well as their role in the construction and experience of urban space. It also makes it possible to observe the different stages of life (childhood, youth, maturity and old age) of its inhabitants, their emotions and the relationships they established between themselves and with the outside world, and therefore the management and resolution of conflicts. These elements fuelled representations of urban society, both in discourses and practices and in material testimonies, which it is important to continue to understand and deepen.

Accordingly, this year (2024) on 3rd-5th October, the Institute of Medieval Studies (FCSH; Nova University, Lisbon) and the City Council of Castelo de Vide will host the IX International Conference on the Middle Ages, entitled: Urban societies in medieval Europe. With a focus on Christian, Islamic and Jewish Europe, researchers from any scientific discipline (History, Archaeology, History of the Art, Literature, among others) are invited to present proposals for sessions and/or individual presentations suitable for inclusion in the following thematic panels:

  1. Legal status of the towns’s inhabitants: norms and practice
  2. Spaces of social coexistence
  3. The intervention of powers in social life: strategies and tensions.
  4. Society and the exercise of power: rituals and practices
  5. Migratory movements within the town: emigration and immigration
  6. Social mobility: processes and practices
  7. Elements of social and economic differentiation
  8. Social conflicts and urban peace
  9. Urban devotion: rituals, practices and materialities
  10. The expression of emotions in the city
  11. Children in the town: practices and representations
  12. Young people in the town: practices and representations
  13. Old people in the town: practices and representations
  14. The family in the town: practices and representations
  15. Court society in the town: presence, reception and tensions
  16. The privileged in the town: nobles, clerics and monks
  17. Officials, literati and men of letters in the city: hierarchies and political participation
  18. Merchants in the town: organisation, hierarchies and political participation
  19. Artisans in the town: organisation, hierarchies and political participation
  20. Women in the town
  21. The marginalised: the poor, the insane, prostitutes, lepers and the sick
  22. Ethnic minorities: coexistence, tensions, representations and materiality
  23. Foreigners in the town: reception, organisation and tensions
  24. Visitors and passers-by: reception and tensions
  25. Urban societies in the face of threats: war, famine and disease
  26. The society in medieval Castelo de Vide

The Conference will comprise 4 plenary sessions featuring researchers invited by the organizing committee, along with separate thematic panels. Each panel will be made up of three paper presentations and will be 60 minutes long. Researchers wishing to participate are requested to submit proposals for whole panels and/or individual papers, the latter being arranged by the organizing committee into coherent panels. The Conference includes a full cultural program with guided tours, Conference Dinner, and a public Book Launch to present the published volume which brings together a selection of articles gathered from the VIII International Conference of the Middle Ages and the Autumn School of October 2023.

Please note, the working languages of the Conference are: Portuguese, Spanish, French, and English.