Keyword(s) Cultural history, Places of knowledge, Libraries and Archives, Sociability, Spirituality

General description of the Research Group

The Sociabilities and Religious Practices RG has over 25 years of experience in its various engagements, and its expertise covers the fields of history, literature, cultural studies, and religion studies, pursuing innovative multidisciplinary articulations between these and other related arenas within CITCEM.

The RG group will continue to focus on the historical development of religious sentiment and spirituality from a socio- cultural standpoint, promoting research in the areas of religious forms of sociability, such as devotion and shifts in spiritual sensibility, religious-military institutions and communities, spirituality literature, hagiography, epistolography, monastic (from feminine and masculine communities) and aristocratic libraries and archives.

In the 2025-29 period, the RG aims to offer crucial contributions – in the shape of research, training, dissemination, and collaborations – to understand the impact of the spiritual, religious, and cultural frameworks in different types of communities in a kaleidoscopic and polyphonic approach to their history and as pieces of a global historical process. Special attention will be given to the communities as places of knowledge and to the reconstruction of historical communities. To this end, several activities will be organised, as well as developing research projects to produce online databases and map the data obtained to disseminate the knowledge acquired. To accomplish these goals, it will be essential to work together with other CITCEM RGs, specifically the Information, Communication and Digital Cultures (to increase the organisation and dissemination of the information collected and analysed), Tangible and Intangible Heritage (to enhance the study of the material heritage of the monastic communities studied), and Education and Societal Challenges (to help instruct local, regional and national publics, political and administrative structures and policymakers about heritage preservation).