Women and Migration in Early Modern History

9 October 2025. From 18:30 | Conference | Spanish | IEMed

Women were an essential component of the migratory movements during the Early Modern centuries, but the difficulty of documenting their mobility kept them in the shadows of academic research until recent years. They were the guarantors of family stability when men migrated, but they also left, although usually over shorter distances. The diversity of behaviours depending on age, personal and family circumstances, and territorial differences presents ongoing challenges in a topic that remains highly relevant today, given the importance of female immigration in Europe.

A lecture by Ofelia Rey Castelao, professor of Modern History of the University of Santiago de Compostela. Winner of the 2022 National History Prize, she is one of the most relevant researchers in Spanish historiography, with a broad background in social and gender history research. Her main fields of study have been the understanding of the importance of women in the societies of the Iberian Peninsula in the Modern Age and female migration, among others,

She has also collaborated with the Ministry of Education and the International Commission on Historical Demography. Much of her work has been published in prestigious journals and in many essays and collective works, among which El vuelo corto. Mujeres y migraciones en la Edad Moderna (Santiago de Compostela, 2021) stands out.

A session within the framework of the Aula Mediterrània lecture series.