The Cultural Encounters and Intersecting Societies Research Group studies the cultural, social, and political dynamics generated by historical experiences of cultural encounters. Starting from the Mediterranean and the Iberian Peninsula, it aims to study intersection as a cultural practice in the different continents and territories where it occurs, covering a long chronological period from Antiquity to the Contemporary World. It analyses how social practices and discourses, as well as political instruments, contribute to the definition of identities. In addition, research covers the contexts of encounters generated by European expansion in the fifteenth century and recognises the role of local cosmologies in their relation to Jewish, Christian, and Islamic worldviews in the construction of contact societies and languages. Three thematic research strands are privileged:
- Religiousness: religious horizons;
- Written culture: production, circulation, and transmission of texts;
- Material culture: meanings, use and circulation of objects.
As part of its scientific dissemination, this Research Group, in addition to organising conferences, and national and international congresses, is committed to regularly organising two cycles of seminars with different objectives and aimed at different audiences:
- Test Tubes – History in the Laboratory; (estímulo aos doutorandos)
- Seminars on the History of Africa.