Small Communities Facing Danger. Strategies of Solidarity and Resilience before the Modernity

University of Coimbra, October 30-31, 2025

Update: The conference schedule is now available for participants. Check it here:

Small Communities Facing Danger Conference Schedule

How did many medieval communities survive until the end of the Ancien Régime? How did many of them reach the present day? What internal cohesion strategies did they implement? What self-protection mechanisms did they activate? What solutions did they manage to construct in times of crisis?

In this RESTORY meeting, we aim to address these questions through a survey focusing on small communities, their approaches to education and knowledge transmission, and their internal solidarity practices at different stages of life, including preparations for death. In addition, we seek to examine the strategies employed by small communities to confront climatic, economic, or conflict-related hardships across diverse geographical and chronological contexts. We also wish to reflect on human resilience in overcoming adversity, as well as human responses to pain, famine, death, and loss, in order to contribute to the historical characterisation of individual and collective trauma in the past.

For this scientific meeting, we invite the presentation of studies in History, Archaeology, Art History, Heritage, and Manuscript Studies. Additionally, we strongly encourage broader theoretical reflections inspired by the Social Sciences.

Access the full call for proposals and the publishing schedule here.