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PREDMED : http://predmed.upf.edu/PredMed aims to function as a research tool for the study of pre-modern Christian, Jewish, and Muslim preaching, preachers and sermons in order to understand the roles they played in the formation and representation of communal identities and in shaping the tenor of social and transcultural interactions among the three principal religious groups who inhabit the Mediterranean.The idea for the creation of the “PREDMED” Hub was inspired by the research initiative, “MediTerraneum: An Historical Perspective on the Relations between the Mediterranean and Europe (METE),” jointly sponsored by the Institut Universitari d’Història Jaume Vicens Vives and the Casa de Velázquez of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. The program focuses its research on the history of ideas and on the study of the collective identities and their representations that have characterized the relations between the Mediterranean and Europe. Operating within this general framework PREDMED is primarily concerned with studying the intersections between religion and the construction of communal and gendered identities and notions of alterity, and with exploring evidence of the social relations and transcultural interactions among Christians, Muslims, and Jews.The geographical focus of our research will be principally on the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa, and the broader Mediterranean, while not ignoring other northern European countries where ideas flowed to and from the Mediterranean through the fluid movement of religious agents and texts throughout the centuries. The specific research interests of PREDMED include the study of the roles of preaching and Christian, Jewish, and Muslim preachers in constructing and disseminating conceptions of religious, moral, cultural, and gendered identities and in defining alterity in Iberian, Mediterranean, and European societies. At the same time, we will investigate the works and activities of preachers for evidence of the social and cultural interactions among the societies and religious communities of the region. The chronological range of our investigations will be from the ninth to the seventeenth centuries.