Documentary heritage on Medieval Studies (Spanish National Research Council, Barcelona)

Established in Barcelona (Spain) in 1968, the Institució Milà i Fontanals de Recerca en Humanitats (IMF, CSIC https://www.imf.csic.es/) is a multidisciplinary research centre with a focus on Humanities and Social Sciences. In these areas of research, the IMF is renowned as a leading institution for the promotion and production of historical, cultural, and social knowledge in Spain and abroad, thanks to its international network with a number of various academic institutions and research centres. With the purpose of preserving its fifty-year cultural heritage and highlighting its importance among the public, the IMF is currently working on the reorganisation and ordering of its invaluable archives. The latter include a number of various materials, ranging from the institute’s administrative and financial records to various resources produced by the IMF’s researchers while carrying out their investigating activities (for instance, microfilmed documents, reports, and so on). In particular, this programme aims at:

1) Cataloguing and preserving the documentary and material resources of the centre.

2) Building databases for searching and navigating those resources.

3) Digitising the most significant sections of its resources.

4) Developing a strategy for disseminating these resources, making them available to the research community and the public.

In the context of this vast programme, the research group “The Mediterranean and the Crown of Aragon during the Middle Ages: history, language and culture (MeCa)” is offering students the opportunity to join the IMF for a two-month internship and contribute to its archive’s reorganisation. In so doing, students would gain invaluable experience in inventorying and classifying the various documents and materials produced by generations of historians who researched at the IMF during the last decades. Depending on the students’ academic background, it could be possible to work on archival sources such as parchments, microfilmed and digitised documents, and transcriptions. In addition to a good knowledge of Spanish, the students interested in this internship should preferably possess some knowledge of palaeography and Latin. It is necessary to have completed the credits of the course. The CSIC does not have subject credits.

Potential applicants are encouraged to contact Alessandro Silvestri ([email protected]) or Esther Tello ([email protected]) for further information.

Indeed, we are fully open to discuss how to integrate the applicants’ interests within our research framework for maximising the mutual benefits of the students’ stay at IMF.