This project will offer a fresh perspective responding to the urgency of fighting online hate, radicalism, and misinformation in the digital age.

More than five centuries after the fall of the last stronghold of Al-Andalus in 1492, Digital Al-Andalus interrogates the ways in which Al-Andalus continues to be a highly topical subject. Narratives of Al-Andalus online present a brilliant case study for the melding of historical episodes, politicised narratives, nostalgia for lost empires, cultural difference, and violent actions on and through digital media.  

In understanding how new forms of radicalism are using narratives of Al-Andalus in the digital sphere to defend violent actions and radical ideologies and how Al-Andalus is shaping these reactionary groups, this project asks three research questions:

1. What are the online legacies of Al-Andalus and how are they being shaped by digital media?

2.  How are different radical online groups using a nostalgic narrative of Reconquista to rewrite historical events to fulfil their own purposes and how are these groups being shaped by it?

3.  What is the role of state-sponsored narratives of convivencia in the digital sphere and how do these narratives coexist with digital warfare?

Combining qualitative digital research methods and a multilingual approach, Digital Al-Andalus contributes to understanding the role of the digital media in shaping historical events as well as the uses of the past online among different but related reactionary groups beyond the dominant Anglocentric datasphere.

It will have an impact on three different branches of knowledge –Al-Andalus, digital media, and contemporary radicalism– by providing an innovative approach based on the historical event of Al-Andalus.

The Project is funded by the European Research Council and UK Research and Innovation.