The purpose of this research forum is to bring together scholars working in the field of Hospitaller studies.
The Order of St John is an institution which, for many centuries, has had a presence across multiple regions and is now an organisation with a global reach. A coherent understanding of its history requires a similarly widespread community of scholars working in collaboration and close communication with each other. The Hospitaller Research Forum aspires to offer the infrastructure for such a community to become established and thrive.
The long history of the Order of St. John, the legacies of its presence across regions, and the rich source materials that offer striking traces of its past, have long attracted the interest of a wide range of scholars in multiple fields. There exists both a very long tradition of scholarship and a very lively research culture on the Hospitallers. With a few very worthy exceptions, this scholarship is often fragmented along linguistic and regional lines. It is part of the purpose of this Forum to enhance these regional specialisms by bringing them into closer dialogues with one another, thereby diminishing the levels of fragmentation.
In order to achieve this the Hospitaller Research Forum will undertake a range of activities, such as an annual workshop on a given theme or topic in Hospitaller Studies. The long-term aim is to formulate a coherent research agenda and address gaps, issues and challenges in the field.
These activities will take place predominantly online through video-conferencing, document-sharing and other applications as required.
The results of this Forum may be in the form of scholarly papers collected in special issues of relevant international peer-reviewed journals and in the form of book-length edited collections.
A further aim of the Forum is to design collaborative research projects which would then form the basis of research funding applications from appropriate sources.
Coordinators:
Emanuel Buttigieg
Anton Caruana-Galizia
Valeria Vanesio
