As one of the first non-Catholics granted access to the Archivo Segreto Vaticano, P. A. Munch transcribed, edited, and published a vast number of documents related to the medieval history of the Scandinavian countries, thereby laying the foundations of modern historical scholarship in Norway.
For DNIR, dedicated to the studies of the humanities and to the collaboration between Norwegian, Italian, and international scholars and students, there are three main reasons for honoring P. A. Munch’s memory with a lecture series in his name:
- His arduous exploration of the papal archives in Rome yielded ground-breaking and long-lasting scholarly results and serves as an ideal for source-based inquiry.
- His archival findings shed light on the historical connections between Norway and Rome.
- His broad scholarly scope included history, medieval studies, archaeology, and philology. Not only does this extensive field of interests embrace several disciplines represented at DNIR; his wide intellectual orientation also serves as an interdisciplinary ideal.
It is the privilege of DNIR’s postdoctoral fellows, once during their employment, to nominate a P. A. Munch Lecturer. At an early stage of their academic career, our fellows are offered this opportunity to host this distinguished public lecture, given by an excellent, internationally acknowledged scholar whose work reflects their own academic interests.