How do historians find people and ideas that barely appearin the historical record? And what can those silences tell us about themedieval past?

In this episode, Cristina Moreno-Almeida speaks withmedieval historian Delfi Nieto-Isabel about who gets remembered, who getserased, and how historians recover hidden histories, and the digital toolshelping scholars uncover overlooked histories. Together they explore how ideastravelled across the medieval Mediterranean, why rumours and misinformation are older than we might think, and how historians can recover voices that rarelymade it into official records.

In This Episode

0:00 Introduction

0:47 Trailer

2:00 What makes Al-Andalus inspiring for a historian today?

6:28 Questioning historical narratives

13:25 Confrontational politics & othering

19:17 Myth making in the past & today

24:24 How can historical research reach the people?

33:41 Lightning Round

About the Guest

Delfi Nieto-Isabel is a Lecturer in Medieval and DigitalHistory and Associate Fellow of the Institute for the Humanities and SocialSciences of Queen Mary University of London. She started out as a physicist andthen became a medievalist. She got her PhD at the University of Barcelona in2018, was a Research Associate and Visiting Lecturer in the Women’s Studies inReligion Program at Harvard Divinity School in 2021-22, and a MarieSkłodowska–Curie Fellow at Queen Mary. Currently, she's an Academic Fellow ofQueen Mary's Digital Environment Research Institute, a Fellow of the RoyalHistorical Society, and the Co-Director of the Digital Lives Programme at QueenMary's Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Her research and teachingrevolve around religious dissent, persecution and women's history.

Forthcoming book: Networks of Defiance. Women and Heretical Conversion in Late Medieval Languedoc (Cornell University Press)

Learn more:https://www.qmul.ac.uk/history/people/academic-staff/profiles/nieto-isabel-dr-delfi-i-.html

About the Project

'Digital Al Andalus: Radical Perspectives Of and Through AlAndalus (2023-2038)' is an ERC selected, UKRI funded project(https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP/X042251/1) exploring the uses, abuses,and afterlives of medieval history in contemporary culture and politics.

The series brings together historians, media scholars, andcultural critics to examine how the past is remembered, mythologized, andmobilised today, from medieval Iberia to digital culture and onlinemisinformation.

Learn more: https://digitalalandalus.qmul.ac.uk/

Credits

Producer, editing and sound: The Lens Box (email: studio@thelensbox.com; Instagram @thelensbox)

Artwork: Kate Nunn, Felip Docolomansky

Follow the Podcast

YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@DigitalAl-Andalus

Instagram:@digitalalandalus

Website: https://digitalalandalus.qmul.ac.uk/

Support the Project

If you enjoyed this episode, consider subscribing, sharingthe podcast, or leaving a review. It helps others discover the series andsupports independent public history projects.