Changing identities in the history of European universities
This panel focuses on developments in the institutional and pedagogical history of European universities from medieval to modern times. The first paper examines the role of the cathedral schoolmaster, a major player in the Western educational system, and investigates how the transformation of this role during the Gregorian Reformation led to the emergence of universities. The second moves the focus to the early modern period and explores the factors affecting the development of medical teaching at a university more noted for its arts and theology, Trinity College Dublin. The third paper, using the University of Iasi as a model, studies the factors influencing the development of the university jubilee as a method of self-promotion for universities. The fourth paper examines the impact of recruitment strategies on the development of the disciplinary field of history in the later nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Italian university system. The fifth paper moves the focus beyond the national to study the importance of the development of international historical societies. An overarching theme of the panel is that of identity – the changing identity of individual actors, such as the cathedral schoolmasters in the medieval West, and historians in modern Italy; as well as the attempts to project and redefine the identity of universities as seen in the creation of new disciplines, jubilees, and the development of international associations.