Between the years 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 in the creation of individual, collective and regional identities: a landscape epitomising the way we see the space and territory of Europe.

From the 13th to the 15th centuries, the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula (Sepharad) lived side by side with Christians and Muslims. Although persistent tensions existed between these three groups, their members also participated in a common artistic, intellectual and scientific endeavour that produced the requisite conditions for the dawn of the European Renaissance. The worldviews of all three communities revolved around their sacred texts—the Hebrew and Christian Bibles and the Qur’an.

This project focuses on one of the most fascinating events of the long history of the human species: the origins and spread of agriculture. Research over the past 40 years has provided an invaluable dataset on crop domestication and the spread of agriculture into Europe. However, despite the enormous advances in research there are important areas that remain almost unexplored, some of immense interest. This is the case of the western Mediterranean region from where our knowledge is still limited (Iberian Peninsula) or almost inexistent (northern Morocco).

This study addresses the question of medieval women's participation in the production and consumption of art and architecture. As patrons and facilitators, producers and artists, owners and recipients, women's overall involvement in the process is investigated within specific social and political contexts, examining interactions and collaborations (or confrontations) with men. A new point of departure will be to refocus on the terminology used in the Middle Ages, particularly the verb 'to make'. For artist and patron is a false dichotomy, or, at the least, a modern one.

European societies face rapid social changes, challenges and benefits, which can be studied with traditional tools of analysis, but with serious limitations. This rapid transformation covers changes in family forms, fertility, the decline of mortality and increase of longevity, and periods of economic and social instability. Owing to population ageing across Europe, countries are now the experiencing the impact of these rapid changes on the sustainability of their welfare systems.

The Caribbean is defined as a vertebrate, geopolitical space where economic, political, social, cultural and human contacts flow from one island to another and on to the American continent. Inter-colonialism made this space a scene for generating new ways of thinking and living, as well as new identities.

This project will examine the manuscripts of a biography of the Prophet Muhammad (d. ca. 632), written by the Maliki jurist Qadi ‘Iyad (d. 1149), in order to elucidate the historical context of the work’s enduring popularity with Muslim readers. The Kitab al-shifa’ fi ta‘rif huquq al-Mustafa (The book of healing concerning the recognition of the true facts about the chosen one) circulated widely both inside and outside the Islamic West. A large number of manuscripts, written between the 13th and the early 20th century, are known to be extant, but no autograph has been preserved.

What do we know about the earliest tool-making hominins? Over the last decade, scientific knowledge has increased, and hominin sites have been found in Africa and China, half a million years earlier than previously believed. A new research approach based on biogeography and adaptive behaviours is needed to understand the complex human colonisation processes across the Old World. The EU-funded BICAEHFID project will create a global synthesis of early human movement dynamics based on the comparison of the world’s longest timeline of early archaeological sites.