JOSEPA CORTÉS ESCRIVÀ

Associate Professor
Department of Medieval History and Historical Sciences and Techniques
University of Valencia

Academic, Teaching and Research Profile

Josepa Cortés Escrivà is a Associate Professor in the field of Historical Sciences and Techniques at the University of Valencia. Her teaching and research career focuses on the study of written and documentary sources, the history of the book, and the social practices of writing in the medieval period.

She has taught on the undergraduate degrees in History and Information and Documentation at the University of Valencia, as well as on various university master's programmes and specialised courses. Her teaching activities have focused on Palaeography, Archives, and Historical Sciences and Techniques, with particular emphasis on the study, interpretation, and analysis of written and documentary sources as fundamental tools for historical research.

Her research centres on the history of the book, literacy practices and the social uses of writing, as well as the critical edition and study of medieval texts and documents. She approaches written culture as a social, material, and institutional phenomenon, with particular attention to the Valencian context and the Crown of Aragon. Her main research interests include documentary production and preservation, the circulation and consumption of books, writing practices in domestic and professional settings, and the relationships between written culture, economic inequality, and social mobility.

She has participated in several competitive research projects at national and regional levels, contributing to the study of medieval Mediterranean societies from social, documentary, and institutional history perspectives.

Main Research Areas

• History of the book and written culture: production, circulation, consumption, and preservation of manuscripts and printed books, with particular attention to the late medieval Valencian context.
• Literacy and the social uses of writing: the learning and practice of writing among artisans, peasants, and other social groups, as well as in domestic and professional settings.
• Medieval documentation and institutions: documentary production, archives, chancelleries, parliamentary proceedings, and political memory in the Crown of Aragon.
• Medieval social and economic history: economic inequality, social mobility, markets, and institutions in the societies of the western Mediterranean.
• Historical sciences and techniques: critical editions of sources, codicology, diplomatics, heraldry, and sigillography.

Participation in Research Projects

She has been a member of research teams working on medieval documentation, the history of the book, and the economic and institutional transformations of Mediterranean societies. The projects in which she has participated include:

• Documentación real de la Edad Media conservada en archivos valencianos. Edición crítica y estudio (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, HAR2012-36656), whose results include the collective edition of Iacobi primi instrumenta in Archivo Sedis Valentinae asservata (PUV, 2017).
• Manuscritos datados de la Península Ibérica (882-1500) (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, HAR2015-64507-P), focused on the identification and codicological study of manuscripts.
• Desigualdad económica y movilidad social en la Europa medieval (siglos XIII-XVI) (Generalitat Valenciana, Prometeo 2019/072).
• ¿Crecimiento sin desarrollo? Distribución de la riqueza, movilidad social y acción política en la Europa mediterránea (siglos XIII-XV) (PGC2018-099275).
• Breaking hierarchies. Social mobility, economic dynamism and institutional Development in the Western Mediterranean (13th–17th centuries) (Generalitat Valenciana, CIPROM/2022/46).
• Mercados, instituciones e integración económica en el Mediterráneo Occidental (siglos XIII-XVI) (PID2021-128038NB-I00).
• Poverty, Subsistence Minimum, and a Dignified Life in the Western Mediterranean (13th–15th Centuries) (PID2025-176076OB-I00; 2027–2030).

Selected Publications

Her scholarly output includes critical editions, monographs, journal articles, and book chapters relating to written culture, medieval documentation, institutions, and social history.

Critical Editions and Monographs

• ‘Aquestes són les obres que, yo, sor Isabel de Billena, é fetes en aquest monestir’. Notes autògrafes de sor Isabel de Villena. Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua, 2019. In collaboration with María Luz Mandingorra and Vicent Pons.
• Corts d’Alfons el Magnànim (València, 1417-1418). Universitat de València, 2023, 2 volumes.

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

• «Escriure i conservar textos i arxius de l’àmbit privat a la València medieval». In Una comunitat humana al llarg de la història: la Safor. Afers, 2020, pp. 455–489.
• «El consumo de libros y el mercado de segunda mano en la València bajomedieval». In De scriptura et scriptis: consumir. Universidad de Murcia, 2021, pp. 185–265.
• «Del manuscrit a l’imprés: el llibre acadèmic, escolar i professional (València, 1474-1500)». Recerques: Història, economia i cultura, 85 (2024), pp. 91–113.
• «Authority and Representation. The Seals of the Municipal Councils in La Ribera del Xúquer (Kingdom of València) in the 14th and 15th Centuries». In La sigillographie médiévale en Catalogne et dans l'Europe méditerranéenne. IEC-Viella, 2025, pp. 369–400.
• «L’autoritat del consell medieval d’Alzira: simbologia i materialitat». In Història d’Alzira. Des de la prehistòria fins a l’actualitat. Universitat de València, 2020, pp. 343–353.

Recent Scholarly Activities

She regularly participates in national and international conferences on the history of the book, literacy, writing practices, documentary production, and medieval institutions. Her recent contributions include research on the learning and uses of writing among artisans and peasants in fifteenth-century Valencia, the political memory of the kingdom, and institutional archives.

In 2026, she also participated in several academic meetings devoted to the historical significance of James I of Aragon and to the documentation relating to the conquest and formation of the Kingdom of Valencia:

• «Un tresor documental: el Llibre de privilegis de l’Arxiu Municipal d’Alzira». Jaume I i Alzira: els documents d’un rei.
• «Els pergamins de Jaume I als arxius de la Ribera». Jaume I a la Ribera. 750 aniversari de la mort del rei.
• «Els notaris en la conquesta i la creació del nou regne de València». Jaume I, del passat al present. 750 anys de la mort del monarca.

Together with Antoni Furió, she also participated in the international conference Sustainability before Modernity: Cultures of Reuse and Recycling in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, held in Valencia, with the paper «The Many Afterlives of the Written Page. Reuse and Recycling Parchment, Paper and Books in Late Medieval Iberia».

[Biography, english version]

[Biography, english version]

Laura Guinot Ferri is assistant professor in Early Modern History at the University of Valencia. She has been a predoctoral (2015-2018) and postdoctoral (2023-2025) researcher at the Institute for Women's Studies and the Department of Early Modern and Contemporary History at the same institution, as well as a postdoctoral researcher in the European project CIRGEN (ERC Advanced Grant 787015) between 2019 and 2023. She was also assistant professor in the History of Science Department between 2025 and 2026. She has undertaken research stays at the Università di Bologna, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, the Queen Mary University of London, and the Università degli Studi di Palermo.

Her research has developed across four fields: the history of women, the history of spirituality, the history of medicine, and the history of reading, all approached from a cultural perspective particularly attentive to case studies. Firstly, she has explored the relationships between women, medicine, and religion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in her book Mujeres y Santidad. Sanadoras por mediación divina. Un estudio desde la microhistoria (siglos XVII-XVIII) (Comares, 2021); and also in “Devociones del parto y maternidad simbólica: la circulación de reliquias entre mujeres nobles en el siglo XVIII” (Revista de Historia Moderna, 2025). Secondly, she has analysed the role of women in cultural mediation processes through her coordination of the book Gender and Cultural Mediation in the Long Eighteenth Century. Women across Borders (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) and the dossier Agencia y mediación cultural en femenino: bibliotecas, correspondencia y redes transnacionales en los siglos XVII y XVIII (Arenal, 2022). Thirdly, she has worked on women, reading, Catholicism, and the Enlightenment in articles such as: “«Para la más fácil inteligencia de todos y de todas». La literatura para religiosas en el siglo XVIII” (Espacio, Tiempo y Forma. Serie IV, Historia Moderna, 2024). Currently, her research interests focus on the relationship between women, bodies, spaces, and objects, with particular attention to medical, hagiographical, and gender discourses surrounding the construction of holiness in the eighteenth century

Daniel Muñoz Navarro, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Valencia (2023). He obtained his PhD from this university in 2012, with a thesis on retail trade and textile consumption in Valencia during the 18th century. In June 2013, Dr Muñoz joined the Scuola Superiore di Studi Storici at the Università di San Marino as a postdoctoral researcher. Finally, he was able to return to the University of Valencia in April 2016, thanks to a Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación grant, and subsequently secured a post as Assistant Lecturer at the end of that same year. Since 2019, he has served as coordinator of the Early Modern History section and department secretary.
His research in recent years has focused on trade relations, manufacturing and economic and social transformations in the Spanish Monarchy during the Early Modern period, situating them within the Mediterranean context. The history of consumption and the analysis of textile marketing systems in pre-industrial Valencia constitute his main line of research. Consequently, he has devoted much of his work to the study of silk production and trade as a key factor in the historical development of Mediterranean Europe.

Degree in Geography and History (1984) and PhD in Modern History (1988) from the University of Valencia. Extraordinary Degree Award (1985) and Doctorate (1989). He has been Assistant Professor of Modern History (1989), Interim Professor (1990), Associate Professor (1991) and Professor of Modern History (2016) at the University of Valencia. Throughout his academic and teaching career he has held different positions and responsibilities. He has been secretary of the Department of Modern History and the Faculty of Geography and History, member of the editorial board of the journals Crime, Histoire et Société and Revista de Historia Moderna (Anales de la Universidad de Alicante), secretary of Estudis. Revista d’Història Modenra, IP of 2 research projects subsidized in competitive calls and principal investigator in 7 more projects. He has been director and co-director of 4 doctoral theses and, currently, directs and co-directs 4 more theses. He has participated in different national and international conferences and is the author of numerous books, chapters, scientific articles, reviews, etc. His studies are articulated around six main lines of research: A) Criminal justice, criminality, punishment and social control mechanisms, B) Poverty, marginalization, assistance and socially vulnerable groups, C) Power, elites, nobility and political institutions, D) Mentalities, religiosity and symbolic construction of the social order, E) the Germania of Valencia and political and social conflict in Valencia in the early sixteenth century and F) Cultural and intellectual history: Humanism, Erudition and Enlightenment. Within this last facet of his research activity, the book Moradas de Apolo. Palacios, ceremoniales y academias en la Valencia del Barroco (1679-1707) [Valencia, 2010] and the extensive study entitled «Gregorio Mayans y el Humanismo Crítico europeo» (Valencia, 1999).

Josep San Ruperto is graduated in History from the Universitat de València (2012) and got a PhD in Early Modern History (2017) with the thesis ‘Transnational Entrepreneurs’, awarded by the Fundació Noguera and published in 2019. He has visited several research centers such as the European University Institute, La Sapienza. Università di Roma and the University of Exeter. During his predoctoral and postdoctoral career he has participated in different research projects funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. 

He has investigated the circulation of people and objects during the process of first globalization, with special attention to social and cultural practices within the framework of the historiographical renewal of global and transnational history. His contributions have been in dialogue with the reshaping of studies on the seventeenth-century Mediterranean and the conception of the globalization process, overcoming structuralist paradigms of interpretation and analyzing contexts of opportunity and resilience in times of crisis and difficulties through the analysis of subjects, ‘national’ communities and the political and imagined borders.

Currently, one of her main lines of research lies in the inclusion of the history of emotions, gender and cultural history to understand first global world, with an interdisciplinary project between history and literature in which he pays special attention to gender issues of global travel authors and their encounters. It aims to understand how witnesses of the past served in the discourses that glorify global political and mercantile culture and how important these works were in the configuration of otherness (gender, racial, national) formulated in an era of connections.

He participates as a member of the research group of the project ‘EMODER. Emociones de la Modernidad. Sentidos y significados globalesa través del género, el imperio y la nación (ss. XVII-XIX)’, funded by the Consellería de Educación, Universidades y Ocupación (CIGE 2022/103 www.emoderuv.com ); as well as the project “Ganar y perder en las sociedades de losterritorios hispánicos del Mediterráneo occidental durante la Edad Moderna (WINLOSE)”, funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e innovación (PID 2022-142050NB-C21).