The International Research Centre for Late Antiquity and Middle Ages has been working as a research centre of the University of Zagreb since 1993 at several locations in Croatia: in the premises of the University of Zagreb in the town of Motovun, and at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. The Centre’s organizational structure comprises the Director and the Council who develop the Centre’s program, its scholarly, research and publishing activities. The IRC for Late Antiquity and Middle Ages was founded with two objectives in mind: first, to present the older Croatian heritage, until then relatively unknown in Europe and the rest of the world, to experts and broader public, and second, to make the Centre one of Europe’s central locations for research and scholarly activities by supporting large-scale international projects to be realized in Croatia that bring together the most renowned experts from all over the world. Given that in the first ten years of its existence the Centre has become one of the leading centres among similar specialized initiatives in Europe, its main objective has been accomplished.
One of the guiding ideas was that the Centre’s activities cover a wide area of research in order to include the greatest possible number of experts of different profiles and interests. Thus, the Centre is not specialized in studying one exclusive segment of older Croatian heritage, but it focuses on a broader time period ranging from the 4th until the 15th century and tries to employ a multidisciplinary approach which allows experts of different profiles (archaeologists, art historians, architects, museologists, conservators, antique law experts, liturgists, philosophers, historians of literature, anthropologists, sociologists, etc.) to participate in the Centre’s work. In addition, the Centre is not limited to studying Croatian cultural heritage exclusively, but it tries to incorporate and contextualize it within the framework of the European and world cultural heritage. This aspect of the Centre’s work greatly benefits from cooperating with experts from all over the world.
Since 1994 the Centre organizes annual international conferences which regularly bring together a wide range of experts of different profiles from all over the world. The topics for the conferences are thus selected in accordance with the idea of multidisciplinary approach and are defined as universal cultural phenomena which allow to be studied from different perspectives. Hortus atrium medievalium is the Centre’s scientific journal, published regularly since 1995 and it primarily brings papers and articles given at the annual symposiums, but also reports from current archaeological excavations, results of research and conservation works on monuments from Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages in Croatia as well as reviews of newer publications from Europe and the rest of the world. In 2001 the Centre started the Dissertationes et monographiae series. A. Terry’s and F. Gilmore Eaves’s book Retrieving the Record: A Century of Archaeology at Poreč (1847-1947) was the first to be published in the series, while other publications are in preparation.
The International Research Centre for Late Antiquity and Middle Ages is conducting a series of archaeological research (Bale, Guran, Osor, Kaštelina on the Island of Rab) in successful cooperation with the colleagues from Croatia and Europe, primarily, France, Switzerland and Italy. The findings of the research are always discussed among the members of the Centre and preliminary reports and papers are written and published in cooperation. Given its wide range of interests and activities, the IRC for Late Antiquity and Middle Ages initiated several successful exhibitions that took place in Split, Zagreb and Ecouen near Paris (Croats and Carolingians, Croatian Renaissance, Renaissance in France) and it is also planning similar projects in the future.
Ever since its beginnings, i.e. since the publication of Hortus atrium medievalium began, the Centre has supported the exchange of publications from the field of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages with a number scholarly and research institutions from Europe and the rest of the world and with time the Centre founded a library which is today considered the best equipped Croatian library for the medieval period.
In 2007 the Centre received substantial financial support from the European Commission as part of FP6 Funds (Framework 6 Programme) which allows for further branching and expansion of its activities. New areas of research and cooperation are being opened, including organization of educational workshops at archaeological sites for students as well as development of preliminary studies for archaeological parks and a number of new publications.
According to our expectations in the years to come the Centre’s very diverse activities will further develop and become even more prominent. We look forward to future successful cooperation with scholarly and cultural institutions from all over the world.
