I n recent years the field of university history has seen a marked increase in the promotion of prosopographic workings of source material, and in particular university matriculae (registers), in the form of collective biographies of individual generations of students. This method allows for new views of questions of social structure, of the frequency and mobility of students of the university and of the social standing of graduates.

In the 1995/96 academic year a long-term joint project was begun involving staff of the Charles University Archive and the tutorial classes in the 'Theory and Methodology of the Historical Sciences' at the Institute of Czech History of the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University, entitle "The prosopography of the Prague University from the 14th-20th centuries: collective biographies of students, graduates and staff of the Prague University", the aim of which is to create a computer database of a representative sample of members of the University in the given period, and to further apply this to the consideration of problems in social and cultural history.  

The "Prosopography of the Prague University of Law, 1372-1419" project is part of this research design. Its aim is to draw together and interpret all of the obtainable data regarding individuals inscribed in the matriculae of the Prague University of Law, one of the completely preserved medieval Prague matriculae of the rectorial type. All of the available records of both medieval Prague universities should in time be processed in this manner, as should source material (in particular matriculae) from other contemporary European universities that offer information on earlier or later studies and the university peregrination of Prague students and graduates, and - last but not least - accessible sources from outside the university, in particular those of ecclesiastical provenience, reflecting the later fates and place in society of the same students and graduates.