The conferece’s central theme is ‘City Networks in Europe and Beyond’, although it covers all themes, periods and regions within urban history.. City networks have played a strategically important role in both the past and the present. Cities and the connections between them have been just as influential—if not more so—than states in shaping Europe and extending its influence beyond the continent, especially through colonial relationships. Although the history of Europe is often identified with states and nations, it is largely the history of its networked cities.
This is clearly evident in Barcelona, a major medieval center in the Mediterranean, which also led the great leap forward of the industrial age, with crucial links to other cities, from Mediterranean and Atlantic Europe to the Hispanic colonies. And with a dense urbanistic, socioeconomic, political and cultural trajectory as a node in Contemporary European history.
With its focus on cities and the networked urban world, the Seventeenth EAUH Conference also aims to foster cross-disciplinary approaches between history, geography, urbanism, architecture, heritage, museum studies and other human and environmental sciences, all of which are critical sources of knowledge for the preservation of contemporary democratic culture.