The GI has more than 20 years of experience in its scientific production and dissemination activities, bringing together specialists from various areas of expertise, from History, Literary, Cultural and Artistic Studies, to the Studies of Spirituality Literature and Religious Practices. In the various research domains, it seeks to explore innovative interdisciplinary articulations in the referred areas and others related to them, existing within CITCEM, or collaborating with external research centers.

The central focus of this IMG’s activity is the historical knowledge of the various socio-cultural facets of religious feeling and spirituality. With this perspective, he privileges the investigation of several religious practices and sociabilities, covering areas such as devotions and changes in spiritual sensibility, religious institutions and communities, spirituality literature, hagiography, conventual and aristocratic libraries, and epistolography, among others.

In carrying out a vast research program in the fields of religious history and religious feeling and spirituality literature, the GI has invested in strengthening scientific cooperation with national and international partners and in a high and advanced interdisciplinary training of its elements, also establishing partnerships with municipalities, museums and schools, in a series of collaborations and initiatives of cultural scope.

The group’s indicators include the annual publication of the magazine Via Spiritus. Revista do Sentimento Religioso, as well as other dissemination initiatives and practices, such as permanent seminars (with workshop format), organization of conferences and colloquiums, participation in international congresses, and several books resulting from his research.

In the period 2018-2022, the Group “Sociabilities and Religious Practices” intends to continue and expand its activities – in the form of research, training, dissemination and multiple collaborations – with the aim of understanding how the evolution and configuration of spiritual, religious and cultural frameworks simultaneously shape and result from the continuities and ruptures that constitute the complex scenarios of permeability and sociocultural migration in Portugal and in the geographies interrelated to it in the long term.