Welfare on the Move: Female Mobility and Social Care Across the Early Modern Adriatic

The WelMovFem project explores the interrelation between human mobility and access to pre-modern welfare within the Republic of Venice (from the 16th to the 18th century).

The overall objective is to highlight the role of migrant women as both providers and recipients of social protection, focusing on their translocal networks and possessions.

Could their geographical mobility influence their capacity to demand certain rights, or otherwise affect the institutions’ abilities to verify the legitimacy of their claim?

To answer this question, the research will not be limited to urban charity institutions, but will encompass various forms of aid that moved between Venice and its Eastern Adriatic domains (e.g., financial aid, inherited possessions, dowries, and slave ransoms).

Intertwining a quantitative analysis and an in-depth study of the sources will be essential to uncovering the significance of women’s material resources in empowering kinship, family, and community ties even across great distances.

Through the adoption of an interdisciplinary approach, which combines gender history with mobility studies and digital humanities, the WelMovFem project will result in an innovative and ambitious vision of social care in a region that connects various facets of European culture.

The research data will be accessible to scholars and the wider public through a web digital platform for the humanities, which will provide a starting point for future research.

The project’s ultimate aim is to enrich ongoing discussions about migrants’ rights from a historical perspective, enabling EU policymakers to have a long-term view of the current migratory phenomena and raising EU citizens’ awareness of these global issues.

The researcher’s mobility between various academic settings (the US, Italy, and Croatia) will enable her to acquire new interdisciplinary skills, expand her social and professional networks, and enhance her career opportunities within and outside of academia.