Professional renewal in contemporary Spanish historiography. A conversation about its material, social and institutional conditions

Abstract

Spanish historiography has undergone an extraordinary renewal over the last forty years, clearly reflected in the diversification of its topics, approaches, and methodologies, as well as in its greater integration into international debates. This evolution has often been analyzed in intellectual and scientific terms, but rarely in relation to the material, social, and institutional conditions that shape our academic field. In this discussion we bring together four recent PhDs currently seeking career consolidation in order to reflect on the mixed effects of these conditions on our professional development. The main points of discussion include the material difficulties involved in launching and developing an academic career; the changes experienced in relation to previous generations; the degree of internationalization and interdisciplinarity achieved by our field; the weight of academic inbreeding in professional promotion and consolidation, and its possible correcting through new evaluation systems; and the advances made, as well as the unresolved issues that remain, in the struggle against inequity within our profession, with particular attention to gender inequality. In doing so, our aim is to enrich the public conversation on professional problems, challenges, and prospects faced by historians in the twenty-first century.