Inter-university and international. These are two of the characteristics that define the research in Humanities at the University of Oviedo. The teams and groups of the Campus of El Milán showcase their projects and their lines of work in an exhibition that gathers the research potential of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters for the first time. The exhibition shows the high degree of collaboration between researchers in more than one hundred projects that have the collaboration of more than 50 universities and institutions from twenty countries and around 40 Spanish universities and entities.

The exhibition, titled Research in Arts and Humanities at the University of Oviedo, has been co-organized by the Office of the Vice-Rector for Research and Campus of International Excellence and the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, and aims at bringing to society and the Asturian productive tissue the wide range of projects developed by the researchers in Humanities. The key of a good portion of the research resides in networking, in the collaboration between departments and universities.

From the universities of Oxford and Camberra (Australia), whose participation comes in the form of studying the El Sidrón cave, to the collaboration with specialists from Cambridge in a project on Spanish 20th Century music as cultural patrimony, research in Humanities at the University of Oviedo has made European alliances in France, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, Scotland, Ireland, Finland and Croatia. Collaboration also reaches the United States, Canada and Japan. In the case of this last country, the National Museum of Tokyo participates in a research on collectionism of Japanese art in Spain. A special mention has to be given to the projects focused on Latin America, with universities from Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, Uruguay and Chile, among others, which frequently collaborate in studies related to literature and music.

In the national panorama, Asturian researchers network with around 40 universities, along with the CSIC and other centers, such as the Municipal Archive of Seville, the General Archive of the West Indies, the Center for Human and Social Sciences, the National Museum of Natural Sciences or the National Center for Research on Human Evolution.

The exhibition aims at showcasing the important work of researchers in Humanities in projects with the collaboration of more than 50 international universities and institutions and other 40 Spanish entities

Collaboration is precisely one of the key elements for the future that have been highlighted during the opening ceremony of the conferences organized around research in Humanities and as a supplement to the exhibition. The Vice-Rector for Research and Campus of International Excellence, along with the general director of Universities and the Dean of Philosophy and Letters, sent a message aimed at joining efforts, bet on cooperation to increase the critical mass and reivindicate quality research.

The exhibition, which can be visited at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters until May 31, makes an interesting overview of the latest research on Art History, Musicology, Philosophy, Classical and Romance Studies, Spanish Language and its Literatures, Modern Languages and their Literatures, Translation, Asturian Language, Gender and Diversity, Geography and Territorial Planning, History, Communication or English Studies. This is the result of the research done by seven departments and thirty areas of knowledge, and aims at also being an element of reference to inform Undergraduate and Postgraduate students of the fields of research that they may choose in their respective studies.

As a supplement to the exhibition, the Office of the Vice-Rector for Research and Campus of International Excellence has prepared an eBook, published in the institutional website and in the portal of the CIE, that not only contains information about the research teams and groups, but also about the contracts with enterprises and institutions, the projects with public funding and research fields.

About the Regional Laws of Avilés (cover image of the )

Miguel Calleja Puerta, profesor de Ciencias y Técnicas Historiográficas de la Universidad de Oviedo

The Regional Laws of Avilés of 1155, the laws that gave privileges to the neighbors of the town during Medieval times, was considered for a long time to be the oldest document written in Spanish. But the studies of A. Fernández-Guerra concluded that they were a copy from the 13th Century, and during the last century researchers have abandoned its use in explaining the urban revival of the Atlantic coast.

In 2009, the Municipal Archive of Avilés recovered a Medieval copy of its Regional Laws, which were restored at the National Historical Archive, and approached researchers from the University of Oviedo for its study. The scientific meeting gathered in 2010 national and international researchers, and their studies have concluded that the Regional Laws of Avilés of 1155 is, in fact, an original document, and, thus, that the population of the town can be traced back to around the year 1100.

These evidences serve to substantially advance the knowledge of the Medieval urbanization of the Atlantic coast, and lay the foundations for new research that explains the process of economy, territorial logic and power that underly the evolution of Medieval European societies.