Now, we are arriving in August, the traditional holiday month for all lecturers and researchers. In 2020, we want to keep it as such despite the anomalous and uncharacteristic nature of this pandemic year. It is time to take holidays not least because we have all been working, in some cases even more intensively than before COVID 19 disrupted our daily routines. Embracing change effectively and with love has required a lot of dedication and effort. We deserve and will get our holidays! However, just before we “switch off”, it is time, on the one hand, to thank the researchers and staff who have enabled us to continue functioning very dynamically and, on the other hand, to look back and consider what these first six months under the sign of the pandemic have been like.

It goes without saying that without all the support, pro-activeness and ability to innovate of the board members, of the Institute’s research project leaders and all the IEM researchers who, instead of shutting themselves off at home on the excuse that quarantines and confinements provided, decided to stand up, relearn their craft and lend their faces to the transformation of the Programmed activities into virtual activities, nothing would have been possible. These were the people who bore witness to their commitment to the quality research they continued to do but also to the institution that hosts them and the ways they took on these new way of carrying out meetings, seminars, discussion groups, website and book presentations, webinars and conferences. To all those who continued to persevere and adapt to the changes in order to keep the IEM at a level of activity that ensured that (almost) every week we were able to attend scientific meetings and to actively participate in events and meetings, the IEM’s board of directors would like to thank you so very much.

After starting the year with a new issue of Medievalista online, as per usual, we then had a busy January, February and the first 13 days of March, with two crowded and busy Training for Tourist Guide sessions (in Batalha and Alcobaça), two interesting work meetings of STEMMA and MEDCRAFTS Projects and four sessions of the Seminar in Medieval Studies on the premises of CAN, to which we may also add the co-organisation of a Congress on Kinship and Social Reproduction which took place in Oporto, and another which took place on Pico Island, of a particularly interdisciplinary nature, on Wines and Vines in the Mediterranean and in the Atlantic, as well as the two first sessions of another open course, on this occasion approaching the Inconclusive Generation, – co-organised with the Monastery of Batalha, CCFRCA and CEPAE of Batalha and with more than 150 enrolled. However, as from the end of the second week of March, we were caught out by the compulsory closing of all our activities and facilities. However, we did not shut up without first having held a training session on how to apply for the FCT’s CEEC Individual Support Program, and without having finally managed to hold a face-to-face meeting of the IEM’s External Monitoring Committee, so fruitful and full of useful suggestions for our future, at the end of February. Both of these working sessions, so normal in those days of February, almost seem abnormal now, six months later and perceived from the end of a July still burdened with great uncertainties.

With the state of emergency declared throughout the country, our programming for the rest of that month suffered greatly, and it was impossible not to cancel a number of very important events, such as the VINCULUM project meeting that was to take place in the USA, the remaining Open course sessions on the Unlimited Generation, and the conference on Peasant Communities.  Nevertheless, it was precisely during the second half of March that the Institute decided to counter the generalised depressive tendency and resist the closure to which we were then doomed by taking full advantage of the renewed opportunities that recourse to new communication technologies provided us with.

And that was why April opened with the reassurance that, regardless of the difficulties and constraints, we would not give up being present and active in every area feasible. We started out with the newsletter, to which we would late add new sections avoided at first for fear of having too few activities to report…

Thirteen researchers, mostly international, had applied to the FCT Scientific Employment Incentive Program with the IEM, already in March; the training sessions on “applying for an FCT doctoral grant” and “applying for an FCT project” had been converted to the virtual environment and we were the host unit for five FCT doctoral grant applications, six FCT Research Projects and three more as a participating entity attributed a specific budget.

Also in April, we converted the Conference “The political society of the cities of the Iberian Peninsula in the Lower Middle Ages: trades, social mobility and power relations” into a virtual format and for two days brought together the 16 speakers who enthusiastically adhered to the new format alongside more than 70 participants from Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Brazil and the USA. Furthermore, the Fernão Lopes Portal was also launched in a virtual environment on a highly successful day with three Zoom participants “visiting” from the United Kingdom and the United States and with high levels of researcher participation on both sides of the Atlantic.

The die was cast. April and its timid but very successful activities brought us the confidence we needed to realise that, henceforth, we could confidently take the path we had started down.

In May, the previously cancelled seminars on “Heraldry in Itinerant European Legal Manuscripts” were restored to the virtual environment and their three sessions were so well attended that the promoters eventually decided to hold a final round table in July and are already promising more cycle sessions for 2021. Nor did we need to cancel or postpone the 1st IEM Conference of 2020, “La construcción de lugares de la memoria en la Cataluña bajomedieval: pasado y presente“, which Professor Pere Verdés presented us in a Zoom environment. 

June would see the revival of the Medieval Studies Seminars in the virtual environment alongside the IEM Doctoral Student Day, and also regular Zoom meetings of the Institute’s Scientific Committee, with significant participation by all its members.

In July, our activity schedule was almost as busy as when all our activities were face-to-face. Between July 1 and 17, the 28th issue of Medievalista came out, refreshed in several aspects, on the 1st of the month, we punctually held the already mentioned roundtable and actively participated in the Marie Curie Open Day IFs@FCSH, we co-organised a Webinar “Miniari il Diritto. I manoscritti giuridici bolognesi e francesi della Biblioteca Capitolare di Vercelli“, based in Italy, while also holding the IEM Visiting Scholar’s Day and with a “virtual drinks reception” included, and a roundtable on the future of Medievalism and Medieval Studies Centres, composed of a panel of well-known international medievalists – coming from Europe and the United States – integrated into fringe events held at the Virtual Leeds IMC in 2020.

With the presentation and discussion of the thesis projects of the online PhD in Medieval Studies 2019-2020 intake of doctoral student, also held in a Zoom environment, we concluded the activities of these first seven months on the eve of going on holiday.

We applied to all the competitions and tender calls that opened during this period with an expressive number of applications. We prepared and await publication of the calls for applications for the four PhD scholarships that IEM is positioned to award in 2020, plus the announcement of a PhD contract for publishing online sources; in September, we will also launch the call for applications for the second PhD contract to implement the IEM Spin-off.

We not only kept the IEM up and running but also did not miss out on any of the opportunities to appear, participate, and mark our presence at the most significant events of this year. We maintained the high levels of internationalisation and external visibility that have characterised us in recent years. And, last but not least, following these challenging months, I believe we ended up creating a more solid spirit of belonging, a new strength and a deeper sense of community among researchers through this process of resisting adversity and fighting against the isolation that mobilised all those who felt that call. Our informal and unpretentious “IEM Café” turned out to be an important asset in this process. Free and without rules, it nurtured within us a more acute and serious consciousness of our humanity and of what really unites us, as people and as researchers, the values that we share and what we want to become as a community of researchers, as individual researchers and as citizens.

The IEM will go on holiday until September 3rd, and shall then return with the usual optimism and advance whatever the constraints of the times. In the September Program, we have many activities and, from there until December, between congresses big and small, online and in person, and with more goals to fulfil than ever, a highly stimulating plan of activities.

But, for now, it’s still August… 

Good holidays to you all, good rest and see you soon!

MJB