Over the next six years, the Institute of Medieval Studies (IEM) will benefit from the presence, dynamism and added value that this group of researchers will provide. These researchers should develop their scientific activities in IEM, both in terms of implementing their personal projects in their specialist fields and in other aspects that individual research also contemplates, such as institutional commitment, teaching when requested, thesis supervision, applications for research project funding and enhancing their research fields among very diversified publics and civil society in general.

It is with great pride that we may witness the permanent IEM team of integrated members expanding and therefore becoming able to count on such a numerous, qualified and committed body of researchers.

We are certain that the growth we have been experiencing in recent years will be enhanced by this significant integration and we trust this constitutes an important turning point for the IEM in the sense of consolidating its sustained and organic growth and its role as the reference centre for Medieval Studies in Portugal, a transformation that has been ongoing in recent years. An Institute that is a benchmark reference for those who wishing to study subjects related to the Middle Ages in Portugal not due to being the only entity exclusively dedicated to medieval research but rather for the richness, interdisciplinarity, diversity and innovation of the research carried out there.

The researchers who are now joining the IEM under this new statute are:

A. Researchers hired as NOVA FCSH lecturers:

CARLA VARELA FERNANDES
1. Areas of Expertise: History of Medieval Art; Romanesque and Gothic in Portugal; Funerary Tomb Sculpture; Portuguese and European Gothic Sculpture

2. Over forthcoming years, Fernandes will not only lecture CUs and seminars at NOVA FCSH (up to a maximum of 6 hours per week) in her specialist fields but will also advance her research in the context of her already ongoing projects: deepening the studies on medieval sculpture in Portugal, its relationship with its international counterparts (Western and Eastern), within the framework of better understanding the circulation of models, influences and artists in the Medieval artistic world.

3. Areas of thesis supervision:

Funerary sculpture and medieval devotional sculpture; Medieval religious iconography; Patrons and artists in medieval art; Royal iconography (national and international)

JOÃO LUÍS INGLÊS FONTES
1. Areas of Expertise: Medieval History; Religious History, with a particular emphasis on the late medieval centuries; History of religious experiences and sensitivities.
2. Over forthcoming years, Fontes will not only lecture CUs and seminars at NOVA FCSH (up to a maximum of 6 hours per week) in his specialist fields but will also advance his research in the context of already ongoing projects: the study of eremitism and women’s religious experiences developed outside the regular context, markedly lay in character, articulated within the wider contexts in which they are inserted, tending as much to the renewal as to the control and framing of religious life.
3. Areas of thesis supervision and guidance: In the context of Medieval Religious History, the Geography, Sociology and Heritage of Religious Institutions, themes that interweave Gender and religious life or studies of the forms and dynamics of renewal and contestation in late-medieval religious life

B. Researchers hired as Doctoral Researchers:

ANDRÉ EVANGELISTA MARQUES
1. Areas of Expertise: Late Middle Ages in the Peninsular Northwest, with particular attention to four areas: (i) space: representation and materialities, (ii) justice and conflict resolution, (iii) production and documentary memory, (iv) maritime communities. 2. In the next few years, I shall work on these themes from a comparative perspective, between the Iberian Peninsula and Northern Europe in addition to the online publication of a corpus of Portuguese documentation from prior to the 12th century. 3. Areas of thesis supervision: Social and economic history (8th-13th centuries), history of materialities, high-medieval diplomatics, history of the Iberian Peninsula (8th-13th centuries), founding and formation of Portugal

ANTÓNIO REI
1. Areas of Expertise: History and Literature of Al-Andalus / Ġarb al-Andalus; Mozarabs; Medieval Culture; Identities and Memories; History of Medieval Science; Food and Healing in al-Andalus.
2. Continuing the exploration of Hispano-Arabic sources for the Middle Ages, following on from much work previously carried out within the scope of studies of Islamic, Christian and Jewish culture, over the next six years, we intend to address medieval gastronomy and pharmacy and in both cases also identifying indigenous inputs and those originating from oriental import trade routes while also studying plants with direct applications in industrial and transformative activities. From the middle of the period, we intend to begin approaching the two known Islamic mystical treatises and which were produced by Sufis from Ġarb-al-Andalus, more exactly, from Évora and Silves.
3. Areas of thesis supervision: Al-Andalus / Ġarb al-Andalus; Arabic Language and Culture; Medieval Hispania; Mozarabs; Medieval Culture; Identities and Memories; History of Medieval Science; Food and Healing in al-Andalus.

CATARINA FERNANDES BARREIRA
1. Areas of Expertise: Cistercians, Manuscripts, Santa Maria de Alcobaça, Liturgy Gargoyles, Sins and Medieval Imaginary.
2. Through the project Books and liturgy in a Cistercian context (12th to 16th centuries): production, circulation and use(s), the study focuses on the production of illuminated liturgical codices in the scriptorium of the Monastery of Alcobaça, between the end of the 12th century and the 16th century and, starting out with the context of production, circulation and use(s), this understands the materiality in analysing liturgical content and, finally, its importance as a cultural and historical testimony. We aim to integrate this case study into a broader framework, generating a new focus on the cultural role of the scriptorium and bookshop of the Monastery of Alcobaça in the wider European context.
3. Areas in which you can orient theses: Illuminated manuscripts; Scriptoria and monastic libraries; Religious communities and Cistercian studies.

FRANCISCO JOSÉ DÍAZ MARCILLA
1. Areas of Expertise: Medieval philosophy; Medieval church; Medieval literature; Medieval bureaucracy; Historiographical theory.
2. Through the project CONSTRUCTIO. Clerics in the Construction of Power Structures in the Late Middle Ages. People, Discourses, Actions, Religiosity, during the next six years, we aim to study the networked ecclesiastic circles and the processes of structuring and consolidating the Christian peninsular monarchies of Portugal, Castile, Aragon and Navarra.
3. Areas of thesis supervision: History of medieval philosophy; History of mentalities; History of the medieval Church; Medieval chronicles; Historiographic theory

MARIA ALESSANDRA BILOTTA
1. Areas of Expertise: History of Medieval Art; History of Illumination
2. The research to be carried out over the next six years consists of studying the phenomenon of the circulation of illuminated legal manuscripts in Portugal in the context of artistic and social mobility in medieval Mediterranean Europe. Deploying an original and innovative perspective, this seeks to stimulate critical debate on this phenomenon at the European level. Through the prism of illuminated legal manuscripts and their circulation, we will be able to specify and more deeply understand the intercultural phenomenon of artistic and social mobilities in the European and Mediterranean geographical context, characterised by legal pluralism and by the multiple and overlapping jurisdictions.
3. Areas of thesis supervision: Histories of medieval art, illumination, libraries, manuscripts and Cultural history.

MIGUEL METELO DE SEIXAS
1. Areas of Expertise: Heraldry; Visual culture; Cultural history; Social history; Political history; Art history.
2. His research is focusing on the analysis of heraldry as a communicational phenomenon, visual in nature, embodied in diversified artistic expressions, which are to be studied across a broad spectrum of occurrences, in keeping with not only the dissemination of these signs by a broad heritage typology but also according to their diversified social usages and their multiple applications across different physical spaces. This amplitude aims to understand heraldic phenomena as a visual instrument of the symbolic and concrete appropriation of space, in a dynamic relationship both with art, architecture and urbanism and also with abstract forms of representation of that same space, such as cartography or chorographic works, and also through the rituals performed with identical objectives. The project focuses on a diachronic view of the heraldic phenomenon, demonstrating not only how the medieval code survived into the Modern Age but also the 19th century revival of the heraldic code.
3. Areas of thesis supervision: Heraldry; Visual culture; Cultural history; Social history; Political history; Art history

PAULO CATARINO LOPES
1. Areas of Expertise: Medieval history (Culture and Mentalities); History of representations; History of travel and travellers; Medieval diplomacy.
2. His research aims to produce a comparative examination of the mental representations and identity constructions developed in Portugal and abroad over the period between the second half of the twelfth century and the beginning of the sixteenth century. This research is framed within dual lines of study: the intellectual relationships, contacts, perceptions and representations resulting from the practice of travelling across its multiple motivations and conditioning factors; and the diplomatic relationships, the external connections and contacts of an international character, both official and unofficial which, in the medieval world, encompass the fields of politics, religion, culture and economy.
3. Areas of thesis supervision: Medieval History (Culture and Mentalities); Travels and Travellers; Mobilities; Diplomacy and International Relations; Studies on the Other (Alterity, Identity, Interculturality).

TIAGO VIÚLA DE FARIA
1. Areas of Expertise: Medieval History (Culture and Mentalities); History of representations; History of travel and travellers; Medieval diplomacy.
2. His research aims to produce a comparative examination of the mental representations and identity constructions developed in Portugal and abroad over the period between the second half of the twelfth century and the beginning of the sixteenth century. This research is framed within dual lines of study: the intellectual relationships, contacts, perceptions and representations resulting from the practice of travelling across its multiple motivations and conditioning factors; and the diplomatic relationships, the external connections and contacts of an international character, both official and unofficial which, in the medieval world, encompass the fields of politics, religion, culture and economy.
3. Areas of thesis supervision: Medieval History (Culture and Mentalities); Travels and Travellers; Mobilities; Diplomacy and International Relations; Studies on the Other (Alterity, Identity, Interculturality).

TOMÁS CORDERO RUIZ
1. Areas of Expertise: Landscape Archaeology, Early Medieval Archaeology, Late Antique Archaeology, Roman Archaeology and Early Christianity.
2. The Continuity, Transformation and Change. A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Study of the Rural World between River Tagus and River Mondego in the Early Middle Ages project forms part of an interdisciplinary, transversal and already existing research network, interested in building the discourse on the evolution of the rural world within ancient Lusitania during the Early Middle Ages (4th-8th centuries).
3. Areas of thesis supervision:  Early Medieval Archaeology, Late Roman Archaeology, Roman Lusitania, Early Christianity.