2021-2024 : Projet FoNTES - Fostering innovative training in the use of European legal sources

Projet financé par Erasmus +

Durée : 36 mois

Objet : FoNTES’s principal result is the realisation of a multidisciplinary and interactive training curriculum on the knowledge, understanding and use of medieval and early-modern legal sources, specifically tailored on Master’s, Doctoral and post- Doctoral students of historically-oriented subjects (such as social history, economic history, institutional history, cultural history, legal history, history of ideas, etc.). This result is divided in three complementary parts. More specifically: The first result will be the realisation of a detailed training curriculum on old legal sources, articulated in three training formats: (i) Intensive Study Program (ISP); (ii) a Master’s course; (iii) an E-learning course. The combination of these courses will meet the variegated learning needs of different student cohorts, both in terms of level (from Master’s to post-Doctoral) and of interests (ranging from acquiring a general knowledge on how to approach legal historical sources to becoming a specialist on their use and understanding). The second result will consist of a comprehensive and ‘hands-on’ handbook, enriched with specific audio podcasts for each chapter, specifically designed to access, read and understand medieval legal sources. This handbook will be vital to the project, as the current ‘tools’ available to students date back to a full century (often even more), presuppose a series of skills which are not necessarily shared by all humanities students, and which are hardly compatible with digital resources. Much on the contrary, the new handbook will be specifically designed for students in the humanities (striving to be as inclusive and user-friendly as possible), embedded within a multidisciplinary context (where knowledge of the legal sources is a means to a different end, not an end to itself), and structured with constant reference to digital resources. Finally, the third result of the project will be the first comprehensive online platform for the study of legal historical materials across Europe. This platform will greatly enhance the learning experience of the students, and provide invaluable support to the teachers. This platform will contain (i) all the project materials; (ii) an online-version of the course, together with its own specifically-designed syllabus, integrated with a set of ad hoc tutorials for each teaching module, specific exercises for each video-lecture, as well as a broad series of additional exercises on various subjects and of growing difficulty; (iii) a list of all websites with legal history resources, including digitised manuscripts and early-printed books, online catalogues and other resources needed to facilitate both the digital research and the study of legal historical material; (iv) a section reserved to teachers and professionals (such as archivists and palaeographers), on how to improve their skills and keep them up-to-date with digital progress, as well as allowing them to upload open educational resources and promote dialogue on the use of digital humanities. This way, the platform will serve both as an innovative self-teaching tool and as a collaborative virtual environment specifically designed to bring together academia and professionals, as a match-making tool between different skills: a virtual environment for an actual “community of practice”.

Membres de l’équipe :

LIER-FYT, Université de Palerme, Université de Cracovie, Université de Fribourg.

Membres du LIER-FYT engagés dans le projet :

Beatrice Pasciuta (Université de Palerme, correspondante au LIER-FYT), Emanuele Conte, Paolo Napoli, Marta Madero (Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, correspondante au LIER-FYT).