Category Archives: Conferences

APH International Conference 2022: Political History Today: Exploring New Themes. Reflections

The international OPG-APH conference Political history today: Exploring New Themes was a great success. Over 100 participants were active in eight panels, two round tables, PhD candidates presented posters and several key notes speakers discussed urgent themes. The program is still available here.

A follow up has been announced as well. Please note the dates:

Prof. Carlotta Sorba will organize a conference in 2023 in Padua.

Prof. Norbert Götz will organize a conference in Stockholm in 2025 and in we will meet again in Padua, rof. Carlotta Sorba  in 2024 we will meet in Stockholm (Norbert Götz) and in 2025 we will meet in Münster (Germany). Prof. Jacco Pekelder will organize a conference with a focus on political history and international relations.  

Conference Program 2022. Political History Today: Exploring New Themes

Five years after successfully taking stock of the “State of the Art in the History of Politics” (The Hague, 2017), next Summer, the Association for Political History (APH) and the Dutch national Research School Political History (RSPH/OPG)  organize a two-day follow-up conference in Amsterdam to revisit the field and explore new themes in the history of politics.

In this conference, we invite you to join us in a reflection on the concepts, methods, and sources for political history. What is it that we do when we study political history? What is the timeframe and the spatial dimension of histories of the political? What theories, concepts, and examples from the subdisciplines of history, the social and other sciences help us explain continuity and change in political history? How do old and new methods of inquiry and older and newer types of sources affect our work?

Another aim of the conference is to highlight new and urgent themes that have been introduced to the field over the last couple of years. These include new perspectives on the histories of decolonization, as well as the rise of the global in studies of the World Wars, the Cold War, the Sixties, Seventies, and the rise of neoliberalism from the 1980s onwards. Research projects on global activism, on climate change and the environment, poverty, or migration, and its impact on local, regional, national, and international politics seem to beg for attention too. Equally relevant are the new histories of democracy, freedom, and parliamentarianism, which have certainly helped us understand, and maybe even overcome, the challenges of populism and authoritarian leadership. A relevant question is therefore also the question what we have to contribute, not only to the academic debate on things political, but also to the political issues of our time and how can we try to impact today’s, and tomorrow’s, crucial societal debates.

These reflection will be triggered by three internationally reputed speakers and related roundtables, new themes will be staged in eight panels as well as in side events.

The conference is organized by the Association for Political History  and the Dutch national Research School Political History.

Program 23 and 24 June

23 June 2022

15.30                       Welcome, registration coffee and tea 

16.00                                         Opening, welcome and introduction to the conference by Jacco Pekelder (academic director Dutch Research School Political History and professor of Modern and Contemporary History of the Netherlands, Münster University), Henk te Velde (chair of the Association for Political History, and professor of Dutch History, Leyden University) and  Ido de Haan (professor of Political History, Utrecht University)

16.15                      How to study political history today? Democracy as embodied practice and national experience 

Keynote by Hedwig Richter (professor of Modern and Contemporary History Universität der Bundeswehr München)

To analyze the crises of democracy in a more accurate way, it is important to look at the history of democracy. It is an “impure” history, a history comprising a disorderly conglomeration of concepts and practices that often contradicted each other. The liberal democracy that emerged from this history, with human dignity at its centre, therefore turns out to be a patchwork, a structure struggling for balance.

16.45                       The state of the art in political history: legacies, challenges, and opportunities

Roundtable with Liesbeth van de Grift (professor International History and the Environment, Utrecht University),  Irène Herrmann(professor in Transnational History of Switzerland, Université de Genève, Giovanni Orsina (professor of Contemporary History at LUISS Guido Carli University, Rome),  Anne-Isabelle Richard (assistant professor in History, Leyden University), Hedwig Richter and Ido de Haan (chair)

In this roundtable we will look back at, and look beyond, the crucial shift in our field of study, from ‘political history’ to ‘the history of politics’. What are outstanding or problematic examples of this reorientation in the study of things political? What do we understand better now? What is the most important question we need to address the coming years? Which concept, theory, method, technique, and/or source material do you suggest to grasp the newest, or most relevant issue to study in our discipline in the coming years?

18.15                       Drinks and dinner  

24 June 2022

9.00                          Registration, coffee and tea

9.30                         Opening, welcome and introduction to the conference by Jacco Pekelder (academic director Research School Political History, Münster University), introduction to the conference 

9.40                         How to write a long-term history of the political?

What modernists can learn from early modernists. A conversation with Judith Pollmann (professor of Early Modern Dutch History, Leyden University) moderated by Henk te Velde (Leyden University) about innovation, citizenship and the proximity of politics.

10.30                       Panels

  • Panel 1: Drivers and defining moments of neoliberalization in Europe. Organizer: Naomi Woltring
  • Panel 2: Norm-setting, power and governance in colonial and political history of the Netherlands-Indonesian relationship 1750-1950. Organizers: Ronald Kroeze, Alicia Schrikker, Lauren Lauret
  • Panel 3: The rule of law: Rethinking the political history of law in European and global context. Organizers: Karin van Leeuwen, Brigitte Leucht
  • Panel 4: Popular Politics of the Environment: Societal Actors and Activists in International Organisations during the Second Half of the Twentieth Century. Organizers: Alessandra Schimmel, Paul Reef

12.15                       Side events

  • Demonstration: visualizing politics, with Geert Kessels and Pim van Bree
  • Posters with presentations of research of PhD candidates and RMA students

The Inps and the Italian economic miracle: politics, economy, and cultures between 1958 and 1969 –  Michele Santoro
The establishment of the University of Antwerp (1954-2003) –
Alexia Coussement
A historical analysis of lithium governance in Latin America –
Mario Parolari
Digital Humanities Project in Collaboration with the NIOD institute -Anne de Klerk
Cold War Developmentalism in the Periphery – the Case of Gilan 1960s-1970s –  Misag Javadpour
Hunting for Ambition – The Royal Hunt and the Representation of Power at the Court of Savoy –  Bruno Farinelli
Bridging Nationalisms: Italian Ideas of Transnational Solidarity Between the Processes of National Unification in Italy and Germany (1830-1871) – Stefano Lissi
What did Europeans, in this case the French, learn about freedom and democracy from intellectuals who came from their overseas colonies?  – Dominique Ankoné

Different actors’ claims to organizing land use and public health between 1861 and 1917 in two of Russia’s peripheries: ‘Eastern’ Bashkiria and ‘European’ Livland – Paul van Dijk
Academic Biography of Statesman P.J. Oud – Boris van Haastrecht

12.45                       Lunch                     

13.45                       Panels

  • Panel 5:  Media&democracy: new concepts, sources and methodologies. Organizer: Betto van Waarden
  • Panel 6: Writing the Environment in Empires. Organizer: Paul van Dijk
  • Panel 7: Making sense of universities in contemporary history: exploring the prospects of interdisciplinarity. Organizers: Floris van Berckel Smit, Alexia Coussement
  • Panel 8: Unusual suspects: local actors and the microdynamics of political conflict. Organizers: Geraldien von Frijtag, Valeria Galimi, Roberta Biasillo

15.30                      How to write a global history of politics?

                                    Keynote by Lucy Riall (professor of History, European University Institute Florence)       (plus online zoom)

16.00                       Roundtable 2:

Long-term and global history of politics

with Marnix Beyen (professor of History, Antwerp University), Hagen Schulz-Forberg (associate professor for Global and European History), Lucy Riall, Judith Pollmann and Henk te Velde (chair) (plus online zoom)

17.00                       Drinks  

                                                                                          ***************

Location

Our conference venue is the Trippenhuis, home of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, in Amsterdam city center ( Kloveniersburgwal 29).

Organization

The conference is organized by the Dutch national Research School Political History. The RSPH/OPG is the national platform for political historians, who are working together to promote high-quality research and strengthen (inter)national cooperation. In additional, the OPG/RSPH provides first-rate training for PhD candidates and Research Master Students.

The OPG/RSPH is one of the founding members of the Association for Political History. The association aims to strengthen international cooperation in the field of education and research and organizes, amongst others, annual conferences.

Organizing committee:

Prof. Dr. Jacco Pekelder (chair), Dr. Marijke van Faassen, Prof. Dr.  Ido de Haan, Dr. Carla Hoetink, Dr. Margit van der Steen (coordination), Prof. Dr. Henk te Velde.

Design logo: Tim Mäkelburg

Corona

Please note that we will organize the conference in line with Dutch corona regulations

Conference fee

  • Full conference fee incl. Thursday dinner:            75 euro
  • Full conference fee no dinner:                                 50 euro
  • Single day fee 23 June incl. dinner:                         50 euro
  • Single day fee 24 June dinner:                                 25 euro

Registration starts 12 May, via https://www.aanmelder.nl/politicalhistorytoday2022

Board meeting APH 23 June 2022 14.30-15.30

Up to date information and registration:

https://www.aanmelder.nl/politicalhistorytoday2022

Contact

bureau@onderzoekschoolpolitiekegeschiedenis.nl

Save the date – Political History Today: Exploring New Themes

International conference

Political history today: exploring new themes

23 – 24 June 2022, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Five years after successfully taking stock of the “State of the Art in the History of Politics” (The Hague, 2017), this summer, the Association for Political History  (APH) and the Dutch national Research School Political History.  (RSPH/OPG) organize a two-day follow-up conference in Amsterdam to revisit the field and explore new themes in the history of politics.

For one, we urge all historians in the field to join us in a reflection on the concepts, methods, and sources for political history. What is it that we do when we study political history? This reflection will be triggered by three internationally reputed speakers and related roundtables. Confirmed speakers are Hedwig Richter (Universität des Bundeswehr München) and Lucy Riall (European University Institute Florence) and Judith Pollmann (Universiteit Leiden). Next to that, we aim to highlight new and urgent themes that have been introduced to the field over the last couple of years. The conference will stage these new themes in eight panels.

We aim for a conference with a variety of sessions, not just in terms of content, but also in format including roundtables, keynote lectures, posters, laboratories and panels on new themes in political history.

Our conference venue is the Trippenhuis, home of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, in Amsterdam city centre.

Call for Proposal for Posters (RMA students and PhD candidates) – Political History Today: Exploring New Themes

One week left to submit your proposal for posters for the international conference, ‘Political History Today: Exploring New Themes’.

Five years after successfully taking stock of the “State of the Art in the History of Politics” (The Hague, 2017), next Summer, the Association for Political History (APH) and the Dutch national Research School Political History (RSPH/OPG) organize a two-day follow-up conference in Amsterdam to revisit the field and explore new themes in the history of politics.

Aims of the conference

For one, we urge all historians in the field to join us in a reflection on the concepts, methods, and sources for political history. What is it that we do when we study political history? What is the timeframe and the spatial dimension of histories of the political? What theories, concepts, and examples from the subdisciplines of history, the social and other sciences help us explain continuity and change in political history? How do old and new methods of inquiry and older and newer types of sources affect our work? What changes do we see in the fields of collaboration, funding and publishing our research? How will articles and books relate to newer forms, such as websites, podcasts, blogs, documentaries, and even plays or movies? This reflection will be triggered by three internationally reputed speakers and related roundtables.

Next to that, we aim to highlight new and urgent themes that have been introduced to the field over the last couple of years. These include new perspectives on the histories of decolonization, as well as the rise of the global in Cold War studies. Research projects on global activism, on climate change and the environment, poverty, or migration, and its impact on local, regional, national, and international politics seem to beg for attention too. In addition, as a last example, histories of democracy, freedom, and parliamentarianism have certainly tried to help us understand, and maybe even overcome, the challenges of populism and authoritarian leadership. In other words, what do we have to contribute, not only to the academic debate on things political, but also to the political issues of our time and how can we try to impact todays, and tomorrows, crucial societal debates. The conference will stage these new themes in eight panels.

Call for Posters

As part of the conference, Research Master students and PhD candidates have the opportunity to present their research and to receive feedback on their work. The format we suggest is to make a poster presentation which can be discussed during the conference with (international) experts. If you are interested to present your work on a poster, please submit your proposal to the organizing committee of the conference, with your name, email, institutional affiliation, and description of your research topic in 50-100 words.

Please note that we will organize the conference in line with Dutch corona regulations.

You can direct your questions and send your proposals to: bureau@onderzoekschoolpolitiekegeschiedenis.nl

Deadline: 1 April 2022

Organizing committee:

Prof. Dr. Jacco Pekelder (chair), Dr. Marijke van Faassen, Prof. Dr.  Ido de Haan, Dr. Carla Hoetink, Dr. Margit van der Steen, Prof. Dr. Henk te Velde.

Call for Panels – Political History Today: Exploring New Themes.

Just one week left to submit your proposal for panels on new and urgent themes in political history.

Five years after successfully taking stock of the “State of the Art in the History of Politics” (The Hague, 2017), next Summer, the Association for Political History (APH) and the Dutch national Research School Political History (RSPH/OPG) organize a two-day follow-up conference in Amsterdam to revisit the field and explore new themes in the history of politics.

Aims

For one, we urge all historians in the field to join us in a reflection on the concepts, methods, and sources for political history. What is it that we do when we study political history? What is the timeframe and the spatial dimension of histories of the political? What theories, concepts, and examples from the subdisciplines of history, the social and other sciences help us explain continuity and change in political history? How do old and new methods of inquiry and older and newer types of sources affect our work? What changes do we see in the fields of collaboration, funding and publishing our research? How will articles and books relate to newer forms, such as websites, podcasts, blogs, documentaries, and even plays or movies? This reflection will be triggered by three internationally reputed speakers and related roundtables.

Next to that, we aim to highlight new and urgent themes that have been introduced to the field over the last couple of years. These include new perspectives on the histories of decolonization, as well as the rise of the global in Cold War studies. Research projects on global activism, on climate change and the environment, poverty, or migration, and its impact on local, regional, national, and international politics seem to beg for attention too. In addition, as a last example, histories of democracy, freedom, and parliamentarianism have certainly tried to help us understand, and maybe even overcome, the challenges of populism and authoritarian leadership. In other words, what do we have to contribute, not only to the academic debate on things political, but also to the political issues of our time and how can we try to impact todays, and tomorrows, crucial societal debates. The conference will stage these new themes in eight panels.

Call for Panels

We invite proposals for panels that discuss new and urgent themes in the history of the political. These can be either proposals for a single panel of two hours (3-4 panelists), or a pair of interconnected panels (6-8 panelists). Each panel has a chair and a commentator.

Proposals for sessions contain:

  • Description of the topic, main puzzle, and its relevance for the study of political history (maximum 500 words);
  • A list of proposed panelists (preferably a mix of junior (graduate, PhD) and more advanced scholars), a short biographical note on each of them, and a brief description of their papers;
  • The name of both the chair and the commentator and their affiliation.

Please note that we will organize the conference in line with Dutch corona regulations.

You can direct your questions and send your proposals to: bureau@onderzoekschoolpolitiekegeschiedenis.nl

Deadline: 1 March 2022

Organizing committee:

Prof. Dr. Jacco Pekelder (chair), Dr. Marijke van Faassen, Prof. Dr.  Ido de Haan, Dr. Carla Hoetink, Dr. Margit van der Steen, Prof. Dr. Henk te Velde.

International PhD Conference | 2019 | Programme

History in the Light of Brexit

5-7 June 2019, London, United Kingdom

The Association of Political History | King’s Contemporary British History
The Strand Group | The History of Parliament Trust

Conference Programme
brexit

Wednesday June 5th

Registration, 8th Floor Open Space, History Department, King’s College London – 15:00-16:30

16:30-18:00 | Roundtable: ‘History in Light of Brexit’
With Sir Stephen Wall, Professor Robert Tombs and Professor Helen Parr, chaired by Professor Henk te Velde
This round table functions as an introduction to the theme of the conference.

18:00-18:30 | Walk to Parliament

18:30-20:00 | Reception in Jubilee Room, Westminster Hall

20:00-20:30 | Walk from Parliament to The Strand Continental

20:30-22:00 | Conference Dinner at The Strand Continental

Thursday June 6th

King’s College London, Bush House, Room 1.01

9:00-10:30 | Session 1: Identifying ‘Europeanness’
Chair: Professor Ido de Haan – Universiteit Utrecht
Discussant: Pasi Ihalainen – University of Jyväskylä

Stuart Smedley – King’s College London – The Historical Will of the People: The Value of Public Opinion Polls and Surveys for Contemporary Political Historians after Brexit

Jean-Francois Delangre – University of Geneva, Switzerland – “I Beg Your Pardon, But WE Suffered The Most!”  Contested Memories And Victimhood Competition In The EU, The Baltic States From Restauration Of Their Independences Until Nowadays

Martin Johansson – Södertörn University – Imagining neighbours: Norden at the Winter Olympics, 1936 to 1998

10:30-11:00 | Break

11:00-12:30 | Session 2: Battling identities
Chair: Professor Giovanni Orsina – LUISS Guido Carli University, Rome
Discussant: Professor Henk te Velde – Leiden University

Talitha Ilacqua – King’s College London – The Case of a ‘Soft’ Border in Nineteenth-Century France

Miel Groten – Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam – Victorian Glasgow, Unionism, and the Empire in the light of Scottish Nationalism

Wiivi-Maria Jouttijarvi – University of Jyväskylä, Finland – National identity in and after a multinational imperium: the case of Estonia

12:30-14:00 | Lunch

14:00-15:30 | Session 3: Comparative histories
Chair: discussant from Södertörn University
Discussant: Professor Irène Herrmann – Université de Genève

Tom Kelsey – King’s College London – ‘High technology’ in post-war Britain and France

Lauri Niemisto – University of Jyväskylä, Finland – Violent and illegitimate protest: visual representations of British suffragettes’ and German socialists’ campaigns for franchise reform in national cartoons, 1905 – 1914

Risto-Matti Matero – University of Jyväskylä, Finland – From human-nature companionship to green consumerism: How sustainable development and ecological modernism changed Green parties’ perception of human nature in Germany and Finland in the 1990s

15:30-15:45 | Break

15:45-17:00 | Roundtable: England and Brexit
Chair: professor David Edgerton
Speakers include Patrick Wright

Circa 18.00: In conversation with Rt. Hon. Ed Balls at the Guild Hall followed by dinner

Friday June 7th

King’s College London, Bush House, Room 1.01

9:00-10:00 | Session 4: The military, society and exceptionalism
Chair: Dr. Margit van der Steen – Leiden University
Discussant: Professor Richard Vinen – King’s College London

George Evans – King’s College London – Militarism, British exceptionalism and Anglo-Indian Officers

Guilia Letizia Melideo – LUISS Guido Carli University, Rome – The “associated” country: Greece and the EEC during the military regime (1967-1974)

10:00-11:30 | Session 5: Histories beyond Europe
Chair: Marc Lazar – Sciences Po
Discussant: Professor Richard Vinen – King’s College London

Lasse Lassen – Universität Bielefeld, Germany – The Tricontinental Conference of Havana: Cuba Creating the Internationalist Isle

François Courvoisier – University of Geneva, Switzerland – Northern universalisms vs. African solidarity: What are the unmet needs for an African Charter for Human and People’s Right in 1981?

Björn Reynir Halldórsson – University of Iceland – Within or without Europe: Existential crises of two island states in the Atlantic 2009-2019

11:30-13.00 | Board Meeting Association Political History

11:30-13.00 | PhD Workshop
PhD candidates prepare the round table on History in Light of Brexit

13:00-14:00 | Lunch
With a group photograph at 13:45

14:00-15:00 | PhD Roundtable on ‘History in Light of Brexit’
PhD candidates reflect on the results of the questions asked at the beginning of the conference. These questions are: What is the role of borders in modern European history and historiography? What is the nature of Europe’s political identity and how has it changed? What does Brexit mean for our historiographical understanding of national identity and nationalism? The reflection by the PhD candidates is followed by a discussion with all participants

15:00-16:00 | Careers Workshop
In this workshop, post docs will reflect upon the next step in their careers after having finished the PhD thesis

International PhD Conference | 2019 | Call for papers (extended deadline)

Graduate Student Call for Papers | 5-7th June 2019, London, UK

‘History in Light of Brexit’

The Association of Political History, King’s Contemporary British History, The Strand Group, The History of Parliament Trust

Keynote Speaker: Rt. Hon. Ed Balls

There have been, and will be, numerous conferences about the causes and consequences of Britain’s departure from the European Union. This conference is not one of them. Rather, we want to think about history in light of Brexit. One odd feature of recent discussion of British exceptionalism has been the absence of attention to any European model from which Britain is held to diverge and the lack of recognition that European countries might have their own senses of national peculiarity. And yet modern European history is far from being the history of one Europe. Brexit then prompts historical reflections on the nature of European identity, collective and individual, continental and intercontinental, recent and in the longue durée.

Approaches

We are seeking abstracts from graduate students that tackle this question as imaginatively and broadly as possible. Takes on the topic include, but are by no means restricted to:

  • The direct take: What is the history of the relationship between Britain and the European Union?
  • The exceptionalism take: Is British history best understood as an ‘island story’ set apart from that of other nations? Or is every nation’s history exceptional? Is a nation’s history different from its state’s history in the context of political exceptionalism?
  • The Irish take: How does the history of Britain’s relations with the EU inform the history of Ireland? And how does the history of Ireland inform Britain’s future relations with the EU?
  • The border take: Borders divide states. Do they also divide nations?
  • The European take: What is the nature of European political identity in relation to its past? Is the history of modern Europe, after all, a unitary one or is it a history in fragments?
  • The historiographical take: What does Britain’s departure from the European Union say about classic works on national identity and nationalism? (We are thinking, for example, of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, Linda Colley’s Britons, Eugen Weber’s Peasants into Frenchmen and Alan Milward’s The European Rescue of the Nation State).
  • The international take: How can the history of non-European nations inform the debate surrounding Britain’s departure from the European Union? How is recent British history perceived by nations of the former British Empire? How do notions of national peculiarity apply to world history? How do notions of federations influence how Britain conceives its role in international bodies?

Application

Proposals should be no longer than 250 words for individual papers and 1,000 words for three-person panels, and they should be sent to historyinlightofbrexit@gmail.com by 1 March 2019 (extended deadline).

The abstract should be submitted as a Word document and include: 1) the title of the presentation; 2) your institutional affiliation; 3) your email address. Please note that only PhD candidates from universities participating in the Association of Political History can apply.

Applicants will be informed of the outcome the week beginning on 4 March 2019. An accepted paper of no more than 6,000 words must then be submitted to the conference organizers by 13 May 2019 at the latest. The paper will be made available to the other participants during the following week on a closed website.

Costs

There will be no registration fee for this conference and we will at least partially subsidise accommodation and travel for participating doctoral students.