Natural Risk in Mediterranean Spain

The DisComPoSE project hosted the 17^th edition of the History and Climate seminar from 12^th June 14^th 2024. The event, organized in Naples by the namesake research group from the University of Alicante, facilitated interaction among scholars from various backgrounds on The perception of risk and catastrophe in the 16^th-18^th, with special attention to testimonies, petitions, accounts, diaries and discourses.

Historians from various Spanish, Mexican, and Italian universities, who share an interest in disasters that occurred in the early modern period in Western Europe and Spanish America, participated in the event. The meeting aimed to take stock of the ongoing research of the two projects that have been collaborating for six years on the analysis of the impact of catastrophic natural episodes in Mediterranean Spain.

The contributions addressed topics related to two main investigative poles: the representations of calamities on the one hand and naturalistic knowledge on the other. Armando Alberola Romá, Milena Viceconte, Alessandro Tuccillo, Gennaro Schiano, and Matteo Ascolese focused on the visual reproduction and narration of catastrophic events; Domenico Cecere, Virginia García Acosta, Jorge Olcina Cantos, and Enrico De Prisco focused on the development of scientific knowledge; María Eugenia Petit-Breuilh, Diego Carnevale, Adrián García Torres, Umberto Signori, and Matteo Lazzari presented their findings on the political management of emergency situations.

The comparison between the two research groups highlighted new possible lines of investigation characterized by the intersection of different perspectives on some particularly significant thematic nuclei: from natural risk to technical remedies, from scientific interpretation to popular religiosity, from political intervention to the management of news circulation.
The ideas discussed during the meeting will result in a forthcoming collective volume.

Download the programme of the seminar