PIMIC · Power and Institutions in Medieval Islam and Christendom. An integrated training in research and diffusion for comparative history

PIMIC is a cooperative effort by a team of western medievalists, Arabists and Byzantinists -eight partners from prestigious academic institutions and two private sector companies- in order to propose a four years ITN program. For this project, we will take advantage of the wide-ranging expertise and complementarities of all ITN partners, composed of some of the most relevant research in mediaeval history sharing a common scientific interest which they approach using different perspectives. PIMIC will coordinate scholarly works at pre and post doctoral level, which will address particular questions from different perspectives, but which will integrate a common and ambitious research programme on a vital historical question: why did certain sorts of institutionalisation and institutional continuity come to characterise government and society in Christendom by the later Middle Ages, but not the Islamic world, whereas the reverse might have been predicted on the basis of the early medieval situation? In addressing this question, the PIMIC-ITN aims to produce a number of interpretative answers stressing the fact that even though the whole Mediterranean basin shared a common classical legacy, institutions acquired distinctive configurations in different regions and periods. The training will allow not merely geographical, chronological, and cultural comparison, but also comparison of historiographical traditions. The novelty of this approach and the relevance of the topic have attracted the interest of private companies that will help the project in implementing ambitious schemes for the diffusion and transference of its conclusions. If successful, PIMIC-ITN will train a new generation of researchers who are professionally equipped to bridge this humanities – social science divide and able to communicate a rigorously historical ‘new medieval’ dimension to contemporary pan-European political and socio-cultural debates and actions.""