The Institute of Medieval Studies, the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, NOVA University, is associated with the International Conference “Um Reino de Mulheres: Expressões literárias, culturais e artísticas nas instituições monástico-conventuais femininas” (A Kingdom of Women: Literary, Cultural and Artistic Expressions in Female Monastic and Conventual Institutions), an initiative that seeks, through collaboration between different Portuguese and international universities and research units, to encourage and deepen reflection on female religious life across the multiplicity of its expressions and configurations.

The diversity of knowledge that this brings together combines with an openness to different contexts and chronologies, in order to capture continuities and ruptures, while also considering the importance of gender as a potentially distinctive factor in the perceptions and experiences of religion, between autonomy and vigilance, in the complex relationship with the different lay and ecclesiastical powers and in the almost always restrictive frameworks imposed by the normative and current ideologies.

This international meeting is taking place at the University of Évora, from 22nd to 24th April 2019.