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Academic Mobility and Identity Construction at the Late Medieval Universities of Paris and Orléans https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.112291 Barucci, Teresa Berend, Nora The present thesis explores the relation between academic mobility and identity construction at the universities of Paris and Orléans from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth century. Because of their prestigious reputation, the universities of Paris and Orléans were among the preferred destinations for academic mobility in late medieval Europe; Orléans had acted as the *de facto* Faculty of Law of Paris since the 1219 ban on the teaching of Civil Law in the French capital. Therefore, their communities were very diverse. The scholars held different political loyalties, spoke different languages, and had different cultural backgrounds. Differences predicated on geographical origin were constantly engaged with, and were undoubtedly the most visible and significant markers of identity in the university. On the one hand, the thesis analyses the construction, the expression, and the practical significance of forms of social identity based on geographical origin in the scholarly communities of Paris and Orléans. The argument is developed through three chapters, which reckon with the institutional, the personal and collective, and the practical dimension of identity. My sources come from archives in France, Italy, and Germany, are written in medieval Latin and the European vernaculars, and include texts produced by the scholars themselves or by the central and local administration and authorities, as well as material culture in the form of manuscript illumination. On the other hand, the thesis contributes to the current academic debates surrounding the development of secular and socio-political forms of collective identity in pre-modern Europe. Indeed, I propose an original trans-regional, comparative, and bottom-up approach to the question. First, adopting the perspective of the diverse communities of Paris and Orléans makes the research inherently trans-regional and comparative. Second, this is a bottom-up analysis, based on the tangible evidence of identity construction among the thousands of scholars passing through the two universities. Ultimately, I demonstrate that the identities articulated by the scholars were not – as often described in the historiography – 'national', but rather flexible, cross-cutting, and geographical, political, linguistic, and cultural in nature. University of Cambridge 2023-12-15 Thesis Doctoral Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) eng Cambridge Trust Cambridge University Faculty of History Society for the Study of French History https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/374090 embargo 2025-09-25 https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/d2cc8015-1ecd-4499-b6da-6f082e691bf4/download 70b845219ce0f8ff43dbe9d9c6669d2a https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/c65ac946-1eec-4f26-b1c7-e3f542b4f23d/download 87eda9de84448d1f82354d60eee3eb5f https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/ academic mobility identity late medieval university of orléans university of paris