DM - Dialoghi sul Medioevo

ISSN: 2611-4364

• Series director: Federico Cantini (University of Pisa), Simone Maria Collavini (University of Pisa)

Necklace DM was created to accommodate conference proceedings and seminars aimed at discussing issues of economic and social history, addressed through the use of material and written sources, but with a highly interpretative slant.
The chronological context is that of a large Middle Ages, also extended to Late Antiquity. Therefore, scholars who have interests that span this vast period of time, but who also have their own specific research characteristics, have been called to join the scientific committee. The latter, however, should not be understood as disciplinary barriers, but, on the contrary, as intellectual resources to be spent in a dialogue that aims to observe historical phenomena in their complexity.
The attention to the source and the genesis of its construction remains strong, as an indispensable prerequisite for the solidity of the interpretative phase, which however remains central. The dialogue that we intend to build and develop does not only concern the moment of seminar discussion, but necessarily starts from the identification of the topics, from the construction of the agenda of the questions and from the choice of speakers, made on the basis of their skills and even more of their willingness to compare. Theoretical reflection on methods and interpretative approaches will be another area of ​​interest of the seminars, given that we believe it is fundamental for developing increasingly refined research tools.
I Dialogues that we aim to build want not only to propose new perspectives and original solutions, albeit provisional, to unsolved problems, but also and above all to allow us to formulate new questions and research paths not yet taken. What attracts us are phenomena and in particular macro-phenomena, which refer to the mechanisms and structures that organize societies in their historical development. We want to read the reflections of these macro-phenomena where they are: from the single artefact or event to the chain that binds them, giving them meaning. What interests us is the recognition of a model, elaborated starting from a critical analysis of the data, and not the justification of an interpretative scheme imposed a priori, bending the different fragments of history to ready-made explanations.
We are not afraid of the provisional nature of the interpretations, which is the presupposition and the justification of an inexhaustible research path; rather, in the name of complexity, we shun historiographic fashions, theories that have become theologies and the superficiality of cognitive paths.