The Society’s 2023 annual conference will be held at Rey Juan Carlos University on 25 – 26 May 2023. The conference theme is “Female Succession in Late Medieval and Early Modern Monarchy – Contestation, Conflict and Compromise”, and features keynotes from Ana Eschevarría Arsuage (UNED) and Bethany Aram (University of Seville).

This international symposium aims to bring together experts from different historiographical fields (history, art history, literature and political thought), with the objective of developing a comparative analysis on the way female royal succession was approached and managed from a transnational and diachronic perspective. By bringing together case studies from across a long time period (1400 to 1800) and from across Europe, this symposium hopes to understand the greatest breadth of experiences of this topic so crucial to the early development of women’s access to political power in our history.

This symposium is organised by the Society for Court Studies and the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid (URJC), with support from Purdue University (Indiana), and will be held across two days in May 2023, on the campus of URJC near the Palace of Aranjuez—a favourite residence for some of Spain’s early modern queens.

Research themes and questions :

We invite proposals for papers of 20 minutes, both case studies and synthesis studies, that reflect upon the following research themes and questions :

written legal practices / fundamental laws of succession
wills and testaments planning for successions
involvement of democratic / representative bodies in securing successions
‘curators’ or ‘transmitters’ of successions
contested successions
coups and dispossession
religious ramifications of female succession
joint succession
To participate :

Proposals, in English, of about 500 words, must include the title and a summary of the paper, and be accompanied by a short biography (200 words) and the applicant’s contact details. Presentations should be given in English, as we are planning to produce a follow-up publication.

Proposals can be sent to the team organisers at femalesuccession chez gmail.com no later than Friday 16 September 2022. Applicants will be notified of acceptance by 18 December 2022.

The conference is free, and three meals will be covered by our conference supporters.

Symposium chairs :
José Eloy Hortal Muñoz (URJC)
Jonathan Spangler (Manchester Metropolitan)
Silvia Z. Mitchell (Purdue)
Felix Labrador Arroyo (URJC)

All queries should be directed to the Organizing Committee via email at femalesuccession chez gmail.com.