Launch of new website for IHSI Publications
After almost a year of preparations, a new website for IHSI Publications (Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu) was ready to launch at https://www.fondazionepolanco.org. The launch celebration was held at the Archives of the General Curia of the Society (ARSI) in Rome, in the presence of Father General Arturo Sosa.
IHSI is the publishing imprint for five book series, and the bi-annual journal Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, producing peer-reviewed scholarly works in Jesuit history from around the world.
The new website is the contemporary face of a publishing enterprise that began over 130 years ago – with the first Monumenta in 1894 – and with the founding in the 1930s of the Jesuit Historical Institute and journal. The website enables IHSI to promote its publications (past, present, and future), as well as simplify the process for individuals and institutions to purchase copies of IHSI books and subscribe to the Archivum journal. Through the new site, the high-quality scholarship promoted by IHSI is poised to reach the international research community in a convenient and accessible way.
The launch celebrations included an introduction to the works of IHSI and a demonstration of the new website. Father Sosa was present to help launch the new site and to wish Brother Brent Gordon, SJ, well, as he prepares to leave Rome and return to his native United States. Brent has spent the last eighteen months as a Regent, working as Assistant Editor and Project Manager of the new website.
The homepage of the new website www.fondazionepolanco.org
Quoting the late Pope Francis, in his Letter on the Renewal of the Study of Church History (November 2024), Publications Editor Camilla Russell observed: “No one can truly know their deepest identity, or what they wish to be in the future, without attending to the bonds that link them to preceding generations...” Historians’ great task, according to Pope Francis, is to respond to the present “through dynamic and strong choices, through sharing, knowledge and research”.
This “sharing, knowledge and research” is what the new IHSI website seeks to provide.
Beginning in 2023, the Polanco Foundation was created within the General Curia, with the aim of promoting the cultural and historical heritage of the Society of Jesus. In the following year, work began on the new website for IHSI Publications, as a hub for those who wish to acquire books from IHSI’s large catalogue of over 200 individual book titles, and who can choose from almost 200 separate issues of the Archivum journal, showcasing IHSI’s distinguished publishing tradition, together with its ongoing and current contributions to the field.
The IHSI website has been set up also as a resource for prospective authors, providing all of the relevant information about submitting a proposal for a new publication with IHSI. The features of the website will allow IHSI to take its place among academic publishers in this current research environment that sets precise rules for being defined as such, offering prospective authors the opportunity to publish with a recognised academic publisher and, at the same time, reaching all readers of Jesuit history wherever and whoever they are.
In her introduction, Dr Russell observed, “IHSI has a crucial role in representing the universal and multiple perspectives that flow into the special vantage point and mission of the General Curia here in Rome. Its multilingual publications reflect the commitment to provide a conduit for the universal aims and works of the Society today.”
She added: “IHSI holds a unique position within the large firmament of academic studies that today deal with Jesuit History. This new site ensures that the Society of Jesus – through IHSI – contributes its own distinct voice to these studies, not only as a subject, but most importantly, as a participant, in dialogue with the wider scholarly community, and with Jesuits worldwide, all of whom this website is poised to serve.”
Members of the Curia and key collaborators on IHSI Publications were present to share in this moment with IHSI, in Rome, as IHSI looks forward to a bright future for the mission and scholarship on the history of the Society of Jesus.
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