ANA RODRÍGUEZ LÓPEZ

ANA RODRÍGUEZ LÓPEZ

ERC Project (STG): “Petrifying Wealth”:

This work analyses the structural changes in Europe that led to the birth of a new architectural landscape between the 11th and 13th century, characterised by the breadth and fast dissemination of masonry.

Between 1050 and 1300, the European landscape turned to stone. It was a structural transformation that led to the birth of a new long-lasting panorama and helped to create individual, collective and regional identities: a landscape that personifies the way in which we see space and territory in Europe.

The Petrifying Wealth project seeks to rewrite the social history of the central Middle Ages, emphasising the need to take an unproven perspective to reassess an element that has always been present in our vision of the period – the sudden ubiquity of masonry construction – but where opportunities have barely been provided to provide in-depth explanations for complex social dynamics. This project seeks to offer new explanations to questions that have not been asked before on wealth, construction and the collective identity.

Bio

Ana Rodríguez is a Medieval historian, or, in other words, she researches the period between the end of the Roman Empire and the Christian conquest of the kingdom of Granada by the Catholic Kings. It is a wide, diverse period so she has specialised in its central centuries, the time when many of the political, social and economic institutions were developed that characterise the Middle Ages and some of the most significant cultural moments. As she wavered between studying prehistoric archaeology and medieval history, as often happens, it was the enthusiastic teaching of some of her University professors that helped her make up her mind.

She took her degree and PhD at the Complutense University of Madrid, spent two years in Paris with additional, shorter stays in other European universities and she is currently a Scientific Researcher at the CSIC Institute of History.

She has run research projects funded both by the Spanish government and by the European Union. Although the topics have varied, her interest focus has remained the same: she attempts to understand how a very complex society was built, with ways of life and institutions that are very different to our own but at the same time form the basis of our world today.

Since 2017, she has been the Principle Researcher for the European project “Petrifying Wealth. The Southern European Shift to Collective Investment in Masonry as Identity, c.1050-1300”.

Her main publications include books and editions such as La consolidación territorial de la monarquía feudal castellana. Expansión y fronteras durante el reinado de Fernando III (1994); Objets sous contrainte, Circulation et valeur des choses au Moyen Âge (2013); Diverging Paths?  The Shape of Power and Institutions in Medieval Christendom and Islam (2014); La estirpe de Leonor de Aquitania, Mujeres y poder en los siglos XII y XIII (2014), plus over forty articles and contributions to collective works. Even if it is not always easy, she attempts to conciliate her life as a researcher with the no less exciting life she shares with her three children…

Bio

Ana Rodríguez is a Medieval historian, or, in other words, she researches the period between the end of the Roman Empire and the Christian conquest of the kingdom of Granada by the Catholic Kings. It is a wide, diverse period so she has specialised in its central centuries, the time when many of the political, social and economic institutions were developed that characterise the Middle Ages and some of the most significant cultural moments. As she wavered between studying prehistoric archaeology and medieval history, as often happens, it was the enthusiastic teaching of some of her University professors that helped her make up her mind.

She took her degree and PhD at the Complutense University of Madrid, spent two years in Paris with additional, shorter stays in other European universities and she is currently a Scientific Researcher at the CSIC Institute of History.

She has run research projects funded both by the Spanish government and by the European Union. Although the topics have varied, her interest focus has remained the same: she attempts to understand how a very complex society was built, with ways of life and institutions that are very different to our own but at the same time form the basis of our world today.

Since 2017, she has been the Principle Researcher for the European project “Petrifying Wealth. The Southern European Shift to Collective Investment in Masonry as Identity, c.1050-1300”.

Her main publications include books and editions such as La consolidación territorial de la monarquía feudal castellana. Expansión y fronteras durante el reinado de Fernando III (1994); Objets sous contrainte, Circulation et valeur des choses au Moyen Âge (2013); Diverging Paths?  The Shape of Power and Institutions in Medieval Christendom and Islam (2014); La estirpe de Leonor de Aquitania, Mujeres y poder en los siglos XII y XIII (2014), plus over forty articles and contributions to collective works. Even if it is not always easy, she attempts to conciliate her life as a researcher with the no less exciting life she shares with her three children…

ERC Project (STG): “Petrifying Wealth”:

This work analyses the structural changes in Europe that led to the birth of a new architectural landscape between the 11th and 13th century, characterised by the breadth and fast dissemination of masonry.

Between 1050 and 1300, the European landscape turned to stone. It was a structural transformation that led to the birth of a new long-lasting panorama and helped to create individual, collective and regional identities: a landscape that personifies the way in which we see space and territory in Europe.

The Petrifying Wealth project seeks to rewrite the social history of the central Middle Ages, emphasising the need to take an unproven perspective to reassess an element that has always been present in our vision of the period – the sudden ubiquity of masonry construction – but where opportunities have barely been provided to provide in-depth explanations for complex social dynamics. This project seeks to offer new explanations to questions that have not been asked before on wealth, construction and the collective identity.