IStReS aims at offering different tools of reference to scholars working in the field of Iberian Studies:

• A database that collects and systematizes a comprehensive, relational bibliography of publications produced in the last two decades in multiple languages —including every Iberian language— that deal with the polycentric relationships between the different cultures and literatures of the Peninsula throughout history;
• A Who is who section, destined to highlight the most relevant scholars and their contribution to the field;
• A News section that provides updated information related to the field of Iberian Studies such as conferences, symposia, calls for papers, recent publications, etc.

IStReS’s core contribution is a database that compiles and systematizes the academic production in the emerging field of Iberian Studies. In this phase of the project, we have established the year 2000 as a chronological starting point, not only because of its symbolic value, but also because it is during these last two decades that Iberian Studies has been consolidated into a field with its own identity, as much in the United States and Canada as in Europe. In later phases of the project an attempt will be made to widen this chronological range in order to include publications from the preceding decades; that is, between 1974 and 1999.

In a similar fashion, during this first stage we are limiting the range of bibliographic references that will be included in the database to those that deal with Iberian cultures —a broad group of practices, objects, and artifacts that find expression in the literature, music, folklore, theatre, film, television, etc. of the different territories that make up the Iberian Peninsula— while excluding other scientific areas like Linguistics, Sociology or Political Science, to name a few. In future stages of the project it would be possible to broaden the database to encompass these areas.

Our database, openly accessible to all members of the academic community and built on Zotero, aims to constitute a reference tool for researchers and contribute to the consolidation and visibility of Iberian Studies on an international level.

Objectives
In spite of the rapid development of the discipline of Iberian Studies over the last few years, there has not yet been an effort to systematize and compile a bibliography like the one proposed here. Numerous publications of recent decades have not yet been academically and scientifically connected, which poses an obstacle to creating a coherent vision of the whole field and its immediate development. This project aims to fill a void in the field of Iberian Studies.

This new mapping will prove highly useful to the meta-study of the field, as it will allow scholars to identify the most studied historical periods, the polycentric relationships that have aroused the most academic interest so far, the most frequently used and studied languages in the field, and the academic centers that promote the discipline of Iberian Studies. Analyzing this information will, in turn, assist the academic community in reconsidering the field, defining its theoretical and methodological corpus going forward, and determining which areas, spaces, and periods require greater academic attention.

The interdisciplinary combination of Iberian Studies and Digital Humanities is one of the innovative aspects of this project, and it will hopefully prove to be very fruitful in the future.

The specific objectives of the IStReS are:

• To establish a group of operative guidelines for the definition of Iberian Studies that reflects the field’s coherence around a set of common concepts and questions as well as its geographical, theoretical, and methodological diversity.
• To collect and systematize, to the most exhaustive extent possible, a bibliography of academic production in Iberian Studies over the last two decades.
• To use available IT tools to develop an appropriate methodology for cataloging the available bibliographic references and making them more accessible to users.
• To consolidate the field of Iberian Studies and make it more visible through the creation of a multilingual website which will also host a directory of researchers who are relevant to the field.
• To promote exchange and collaboration between researchers, research centers and groups, and project teams that are actively working in the field of Iberian Studies on both sides of the Atlantic.

Forschungsprojekt (Centro de Estudos Comparados, Universidade de Lisboa)