What does it mean to do urban history today? What sources, methods, and interpretative perspectives enable us to investigate the city as a historical object at a time when traditional disciplinary boundaries are becoming increasingly permeable and research practices are engaging with profoundly renewed tools, languages, and scales of analysis?
More than fifty years after the period that, beginning in the 1970s, marked the emergence of urban history as an autonomous field of research within Italian historiography—through the establishment of scholarly forums, research networks, and publishing initiatives, including the Association and the journal—it is timely to reflect not so much on the protagonists of that formative phase as on the path the discipline has followed and the directions it is currently taking.
Urban history has developed as an open field of inquiry, enriched through dialogue with economic, social, and rural history, historical geography, cartography, the history of architecture, and urban planning. Over time, it has expanded to encompass a wide range of themes and perspectives, including the relationship between city and countryside, the study of the forma urbis, real estate markets, the growth of the modern city, urban elites, technical bureaucracies, networks and infrastructures, and processes of mobility. In recent decades, this intellectual heritage has been further strengthened through engagement with the Spatial Turn, the adoption of digital tools such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the opening to global and transnational perspectives, and, more recently, contributions from Heritage Studies, Environmental Studies, and the Digital Humanities.
Rather than reconstructing this historiographical development, this special issue, Doing Urban History Today: Sources, Methods, Disciplines, seeks to explore how these transformations have reshaped the practice of historical research on the city. Its aim is to bring together contributions that, through original case studies, explicitly examine the relationship between research questions, sources, methodologies, and interpretations, demonstrating how methodological reflection can become an integral part of historical analysis.
Particular attention will be devoted to the role of sources, the ways in which they are constructed and interrogated, and the methodological implications arising from the use of both established and innovative approaches. The focus is not on the sources themselves, but rather on the questions historians ask of them, thereby transforming them into tools for addressing broader historiographical issues. Contributions that explicitly reflect on the relationship between sources, methodology, and the construction of historical interpretation through original case studies will be especially welcome.
By way of example, submissions may address, among others, the following themes:
Representing the city, through the critical analysis of iconographic, cartographic, photographic, and audiovisual sources, examining their processes of production, strategies of representation, and political, cultural, and social uses.
Narrating and imagining the city, using literary, memoir, autobiographical, and travel sources to investigate urban practices, perceptions, identities, and symbolic constructions of urban space.
Measuring and governing the city, through the use of serial, statistical, cadastral, administrative, and planning sources, with particular attention to the processes through which data are produced and to the forms of knowledge and governance of urban space.
The materiality of the city, through archaeological, architectural, and material sources, to reconstruct transformations in the urban fabric, the built environment, and the relationships between environment, infrastructure, and society.
Comparing cities, territories, and scales, by adopting comparative, transnational, or global approaches that relate different urban contexts and reflect on the circulation of models, practices, and forms of knowledge.
Rethinking research methods and tools, by discussing the contribution of the Digital Humanities, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), three-dimensional modelling, augmented reality, and other digital tools—not merely as techniques of representation, but as analytical devices capable of generating new research questions and new forms of historical interpretation.
This joint initiative of AISU International and the journal Storia Urbana, now in its third special issue, is open to AISU members whose membership fees are paid up to date (by 15 September 2026) and who submit original, unpublished contributions. Articles may be submitted in Italian, French, English, or Spanish and will undergo double-blind peer review.
Abstracts of no more than 400 words should be sent to segretario@aisuinternational.net together with a short biographical note (maximum 100 words), by 10 August 2026.
Authors will be notified of the outcome of the selection process by 20 August 2026. Accepted papers must be submitted in their final version by 30 November 2026.
