The Seminar on Social History of the Population (Sehisp) at the Faculty of Humanities of Albacete, together with the Centre Roland Mousnier (CRM-Sorbonne Université) and the Núcleo de Estudos de População ‘Elza Berquó’ (NEPO-Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil), have called on the international scientific community to the ‘International Congress Families and Historical Change. Relational dynamics and social transformations. A global perspective, centuries XIII-XX’, which will take place at the Campus of Albacete from May 7 to 9, 2025, with nearly five hundred registered participants from 29 countries.
This congress, whose inauguration will take place on Wednesday, May 7, at the Polivalent building of the Albacete campus, starting at 4:30 p.m., has as its central theme the family and its objective, the study of historical and social change, as reported by the UCLM in a press release.
The event, which will run until May 9, is structured in a program composed of nine thematic axes divided in turn into plenary sessions and parallel sessions. The latter, due to their high number, 70, will be held simultaneously in different spaces and time slots in the morning and afternoon at the Faculty of Humanities of Albacete. In addition, to facilitate organization and fluidity of interventions, in some cases, the sessions have been subdivided into sub-sessions with differentiated schedules.
Specifically, the main thematic axes will be Sources, methods and proposals for methodological renewal. Between interdisciplinarity and artificial intelligence; Families, households, reproduction. Economy, work, inheritances and legacies; Marriages, unions: family relationships, alliances and kinship; Individual and collective trajectories: life course, generational changes, and social mobility; Family, gender, ages, and inequalities; Emotions, culture, values. Solidarities and daily life; Conflicts, transgressions, disobediences; Displacements: migrations, local communities, absences; The family in teaching and dissemination. Transfer and didactics. Papers can be presented in Spanish, English, French, Portuguese, and Italian.
The realization of this new international congress coincides with the 25th anniversary of Sehisp and continues with other initiatives promoted by this research group at UCLM. In fact, in 2007, another similar congress was held. It was done in collaboration with the Family and Power Elite Seminar of the University of Murcia and now other groups from the Basque Country and Extremadura are also joining, in addition to those mentioned from the Sorbonne in France and Brazil.
As indicated by the organization, «today there is an extraordinary sensitivity to everything related to family issues. «We are witnessing significant transformations within it that for many are either the best reflection of the crisis that characterizes current societies, or of their progress and advancement. Precisely, in order to try to understand the processes of change that we are experiencing today and to avoid falling into clichés and stereotyped images, this congress is being held where various specialists will address the topic in its multiple thematic and methodological aspects.»
It is planned that the results of the Congress will be published in open access in the Social History of the Population Collection edited by Editorial Trea and the University of Castilla-La Mancha: