‘The long history of identity, ethnicity and nationhood’ research network, hosted by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) and Birmingham Research Institute for History and Cultures (BRIHC), is organising a series of sessions at the IMC 2017, focusing on the reproduction of collective identities in the middle ages. While a generic constructivist approach is widely shared in research on pre-modern identities, it often remains uncritical. On the one hand, it sometimes conceals latent essentialism (best represented by the formula ‘identities are constructed, but having been constructed become real’), and, on the other hand, restricts our capacity to arrive at a systemic understanding of how exactly collective identities are asserted and reproduced over long periods of time. Hence, our main goal is to tackle the difficult question of long-term reproduction of the same projected identities, often alongside broadly similar constructs, without resorting to essentialist or objectifying explanations.

We invite paper proposals focused on any period and region of medieval history exploring how a particular concept of identification, collective identity or polity was reproduced, imposed and reimagined over a long period of time. What were the material, political, intellectual and cultural conditions in which a particular identity can be reasserted and reinterpreted in the longue durée? What theoretical lenses can we use to make sense of certain identities’ persistence, if we accept the contingent and constructed nature of any collective identity and political organisation? Paper proposals addressing these and related questions should be sent to identity@torch.ox.ac.uk by Monday August 22.