Society

The Italian Society of Historical Demography (SIDeS) was born in 1977 to promote the study of historical demography by conducting conferences and seminars and publishing the related proceedings therein, as well as the scientific journal Popolazione e storia. In its 45 years of existence, SIDeS has counted among its members hundreds of scholars who are active at the national and international level. The research conducted by SIDeS members is geared towards studies of population, demographic structures and territorial distributions of population, historical evolution of the demographic system, as well as fertility, marriage and mortality in the past. Other areas of interdisciplinary investigation include migration, epidemics, child abandonment, family structures and dynamics, behaviours of minorities, relationships between demographic variables, and other social and economic factors.

The inauguration of SIDeS took place in Florence on May 28, 1977 at the end of the conference on the ‘Mortality Crisis and Italian society’. At that time, the general assembly of the members of the pre-existing Committee for the Study of Population was transformed into a constituting assembly of SIDeS, approving the statute of the Company.

From 1977 until the present, SIDeS has continuously devoted itself to the organisation of conferences and seminars and the publication of related proceedings. Furthermore, in 1984, it began publishing a journal called Bollettino di Demografia Storica, and 31 issues were printed up to 1999. The publication of the current SIDeS journal, Popolazione e storia, started in 2000.

In carrying out all these activities, SIDeS has always promoted and enhanced international collaboration between scholars of historical demography both by inviting foreign scholars to deliver presentations at national conferences and by organising scientific events in collaboration with other national and international associations, such as the Société de Démographie Historique (SDH), Asociación de Demografía Histórica (ADEH) and other associations and institutions. Thanks to the joint efforts of SIDeS, SDH and ADEH, in collaborations with other European scholars, the European Society of Historical Demography (ESHD) was launched in 2012, bringing together all scholars of historical demography in Europe.