The International Institute for Baroque Studies has just published Volume II, number 3 of the Journal of Baroque Studies.
Edited by Frans Ciappara and designed by architect Hermann Bonnici, this edition includes two book reviews and contributions on Theatre Spaces in the Baroque Age by Paul Xuereb; Discovering the original main altar in St John’s Conventual Church by Cynthia de Giorgio; La Figure du Chevalier de Malte dans Manin Lescaut, fiction ou realité? by Carmen Depasquale of the University of Malta; Guerra, Economiae Rivoluzione Militare by Francesco Frasca of the University of La Sapienza in Rome; ‘Ebreo fatto Cristiano’: identitè religeuse des juifs convertis à Malte (XVI-XVIII sìecles) by Sarah Azzopardi-Ljubibratic of the University of Lausanne; Breve notizia della tipografica professione nell’isola di Malta by Federica Formiga of the University of Verona; The Significance of the Via Crucis and its Artistic Development in Malta by Giorgiona Pavia of the University of Malta; Cardinal Giovanni Battista de Luca and his Reflections on the Rights of Resistance to the Prince. An Unresolved Debate by Gian Luca D’Errico of the University of Bologna; Baroque Collective memory as a component of Maltese National Identity by Charles Xuereb; ‘Per servitio di questi populi…’ The development of Valletta’s Market place: a study of the evolution of the socio-spatial dialectic between the XVIth and XIXth Centuries by Christian Mifsud; The Maltese perit in reconstructing the Early Modern Landscape by Mevrick Spiteri and Daniel Borg; and Delle case, e Fondi: Grand Master Vilhena’s Code on Property, Construction and the Officio delle Case in eighteenth-Century Malta by Mevrick Spiteri.
This issue of the Journal of Baroque Studies contains two book reviews of Prof. Ciappara’s Church-State Relations in Late 18th-century Malta: Gio. Nicolò Muscat (1735-1803) and Roger Ellul-Micallef’s Roberto Ranieri Costaguti. It also includes a special supplement on Gender Issues in the Baroque World, based on research at the Biblioteca Angelica in Rome, by the director of the International Institute for Baroque Studies, Denis De Lucca.
The director said that the Journal of Baroque Studies has recently been inserted in the list of peer-reviewed publications compiled by ANVUR – Agenzia Nazionale di Valutazione del Sistema Universitario e della Ricerca, which is the Italian National Agency responsible for the Evaluation of the University and Research Systems.
Established by a 2006 law with the aim of improving meritocracy in academic research, ANVUR is based on Aeres in France and the Research Excellence Framework (REF) in the United Kingdom. Since 2011, it has been responsible for evaluating the quality of academic research in 95 universities, 21 research agencies or institutes, and 17 inter-university consortia.