Mission

Welcome to IEM!

The Institute for Medieval Studies (IEM), School of Social Sciences and Humanites of NOVA University (NOVA FCSH), is a research unit founded in 2002 and classified as EXCELLENT by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) in 2019.

IEM was created from the dynamics driven by the NOVA FCSH's Scientific Centre for Medieval Studies, which brought together most of the faculty’s researchers dedicated to Medieval Studies in the 1990s. In both the national and international contexts, the Institute benefits from a prestigious heritage, associated above all with its founders - José Mattoso and Luís Krus. It has a strong identity of its own, as it is the only research unit in Portugal exclusively dedicated to Medieval Studies, where several disciplines that study our medieval past come together.

The IEM today joins around 200 researchers from the scientific areas of History, Art History, Archaeology, Literary Studies, and Medieval Musicology, which provides a unique environment that is the result of methodological diversity approaches and inter- and multidisciplinarity, which goes beyond the mere scope of the social and human sciences.

IEM promotes outstanding research in the field of Medieval Studies, stimulating contact and collaboration with other medievalists, in Portugal and abroad, to create synergies and collaborative networks that contribute to innovative, comparative, and multidisciplinary approaches to the Middle Ages.

This website was presented in January 2024. Its contents cover the Institutes' activities mainly since 2018. All information about IEM prior to this date is available on:

IEM's goals consist of:

  1. Promotion of a critical thinking and debate in the thematic field of Medieval Studies, with a strong emphasis on interdisciplinarity and a comparative approach;
  2. Encouraging the proactive and autonomous participation of doctoral students and researchers in the Institute’s various lines of research and in the creation of new research themes;
  3. Fostering the training of young researchers and their integration into research teams under the supervision of experienced researchers;
  4. Cooperating with NOVA FCSH to maintain a continuous and sustained offer of training at all levels of study (bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral), to guarantee a permanent dialogue between research and teaching.
  5. Increasing scientific and academic exchange and networking with national and international research centres of excellence that share the same objectives in the field of Medieval Studies;
  6. Dissemination of the knowledge produce in IEM to a wide and diverse public, thus enhancing the protection and valorisation of the medieval past and heritage and turning it into an asset for social and economic development.