What: Workshop “Digital Humanities e Mobilità: Ulteriori Prospettive da Progetti ERC”
Where: Department of Political Sciences, RomaTre University, Room 4A (4th floor), via Gabriello Chiabrera 199, Rome
When: 7 November 2025, 2:30pm
We are delighted to announce that the second joint workshop of the ERC projects MICOLL (Migrating Commercial Law and Language. Rethinking Lex Mercatoria, 11th–17th centuries) and HOLYLAB (A global economic organization in the early modern period: The Custody of the Holy Land through its account books (1600-1800)) will take place very soon in Rome, hosted by the Department of Political Sciences of Roma Tre University. The workshop will also host a postdoc of the research team of the project IUSTITIAM.
This meeting represents the continuation of a fruitful collaboration that began last year in Padua, when the two research teams gathered to reflect on the intersections between historical research—particularly in the field of mobility studies—and the methodological tools of the digital humanities. The discussions held on that occasion opened up new ways of thinking about the use of digital instruments, databases, and mapping technologies in reconstructing past networks of exchange and interaction (you can revisit last year’s program HERE).
The forthcoming workshop, coordinated by Prof. Felicita Tramontana (HOLYLAB, Roma Tre University) and Prof. Stefania Gialdroni (MICOLL, University of Padua), will further explore one of the key issues that lies at the heart of both projects: how to investigate human and documentary mobility in history through digital methods. By comparing different but complementary research perspectives—from the circulation of merchants, ideas and art in medieval and early modern Europe to the movement of people, contracts, and legal and economic models in the early modern Mediterranean—the event aims to promote a dialogue on how digital humanities can enhance the interpretive dimension of historical inquiry.
By focusing on “mobility” as both a research topic and a methodological challenge, the meeting will offer a platform to discuss how digital environments can help us reconstruct the complexity of historical movement, across geographical, linguistic, and conceptual boundaries.
