Political history today: exploring new themes
International Conference of the Association for Political History
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), 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 today’s, and tomorrow’s, 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.
Keynotes
Keynote lectures by Hedwig Richter and Lucy Riall and Judith Pollmann. Internationally reputed speakers give keynote lectures as an introduction to the debate on how to study political history today. The keynote lectures are open to all participants in the conference.
Mode of operation
We aim for a conference with a variety of sessions, not just in terms of content, but also in format. Therefore we offer not only keynote lectures, but also roundtables, panels on new themes in political history, laboratories and poster presentations. Find more information here.
Location
Our conference venue is the Trippenhuis, home of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, in Amsterdam city center.
Organization
The conference is organized by the Association for Political History and the Dutch national Research School Political History.
Organizing committee are 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.
Previous conferences
On this page you can find an overview of the previous conferences and conference reports.