CARMEN. The Worldwide Medieval Network (External organisation)

Description

CARMEN links research institutions, universities, interest groups and individuals with a common scholarly interest in the study of the Middle Ages. It encompasses scholars from all continents to create an open and truly international platform for co-operation in the field of medieval research.

CARMEN brings together scholars from universities and academic organisations who are actively involved in research on the Middle Ages (c. 400-1500 AD/CE). We access half of the global body of about 20,000 researchers, with important contributions from Europe, North America, East Asia, Australasia and Latin America. CARMEN successfully promotes the construction of major scholarly collaborative projects. Its Executive Group directs strategies, disseminates information, reports to national associations and major conferences, and organises an annual meeting. It assists nascent projects to reach critical mass and tries to pro-actively shape research agendas.
CARMEN seeks to bring medievalists together both with other medievalists and scholars and specialists outside medieval disciplines, to form international collaborative research projects and research-related activities.
CARMEN helps in identifying sources of large-scale international research funds and grants, and helps research groups apply for such money. CARMEN can help instigate and co-ordinate the international network behind such projects and facilitate communication during the application process.
CARMEN recognises that large-scale projects have often gestated over a long time, and helps foster such initiatives as they grow from an initial idea to the level of maturity desired by the participants.
CARMEN helps shape the research environment for medievalists, by brokering funding opportunities with national and international agencies, and identifying relevant research trends. CARMEN envisages the next phase of development for the scholarly field as:

Engaging with those responsible for developing public policy and research agendas, particularly, members of national research-funding agencies, selected National Contact Points for FP8 programmes, the European Commission’s Research Directorate-General and EASH (European Association for the Social Sciences and Humanities).
Realigning scholarly interests and developing projects which clearly address issues at the heart of current and future public policy, whilst helping shape these future directions
Moving from multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary research within the Humanities, to cross-faculty research, engaging most particularly with Medicine, the Social Sciences, ICT and Applied Science
Maximising the public impact of research by developing partnerships with public and private bodies outside academia, including media, broader educational organisations and through knowledge transfer activities, and with tourism and heritage partners.

CARMEN envisages promoting research topics which are likely to fall under one of these over-arching themes:

The nature of health, human well-being and social welfare, and the role of education and lifelong learning in human self-fulfilment
Cultural interaction and diversity
Communities under stress
Cultural memories
Basic research on medieval cultures

Period	2019
Held at	CARMEN. The Worldwide Medieval Network, United Kingdom
Degree of Recognition	International