Visual Cultures in Early Modern Europe

The Oxford-Princeton-Münster Workshop on Early Modern History.

15-16 March 2011,

St. John’s College, Research Centre.

               

This workshop pilots a three-year collaboration on early modern history to bring together faculty, graduate students, and early career researchers from the University of Oxford, the University of Princeton and the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. It engages the participants in a dialogue between History, History of Art, English, and Anthropology in order to explore the visual cultures of early modern Europe and beyond. The two-day exchange workshop combines a theory reading group with a discussion forum in which graduate students present their research, ranging from the representation of war in Italian art, to visual aspects of intercultural rituals in West Africa, to indigo consumption in the Spanish empire, and to the ideal of feminine beauty in Japan. 

 
OXFORD - OSLO RESEARCH NETWORK:

          "Writing Europe into the World, 1880-2010"

                Oxford-Oslo Graduate Conference on Contemporary History,

                  May 2010

 

This conference was the final in a series and part of a six-year long collaboration between the Forum for Contemporary History at the University of Oslo, and the Modern European History Centre (MEHRC) here at the University of Oxford. It brought together graduate students and early career researchers, supported by senior academic panelists, to explore recent challenges to the position of European history in the world.  Participants addressed a diverse range of comparative national, transnational and international subjects, including  the history of: Humanitarian Action; 'Rights'; Peace Activism; Glo-cal Culture; Diplomacy of Expertise; and the Practice of Writing History.

    "Civil Society in Twentieth-Century Europe"

                                 2005-2007

                           
                        US Peacekeeping forces, Suez, 1956

Research partners: Forum of Contemporary History, University of Oslo: Helge Pharo

 

 

Funding bodies: MEHRC and the Institute of Contemporary History at the University of Oslo.

 

 

Aims and objectives: To explore civil society and the public sphere at the level of international exchange and collaboration through a series of interlocking studies involving citizenship, gender, intellectuals and global co-operation. 

 

 

Collaboration: A series of annual workshops, held in Oxford and Oslo. The first on 'Gender and Citizenship: An International Workshop' in April 2005 was organised by Jane Caplan and Even Lange. The second on 'Intellectuals and the Public Sphere: Britain and Scandinavia since the Second World War' in May 2006 was organised by Jan Eivind Myhre and Jose Harris. The third workshop on ‘The Value of International Organisations’ was held in Oxford on 2 June 2007, organised by Patricia Clavin and Helge Pharo. This looked at ways in which the League of Nations, the UN, the World Bank, the WHO and NATO have facilitated global co-operation with panels on international organisations’ contribution to peace-keeping, health, cultural understanding, and economic and financial co-operation. A final panel examined the issue of popular support for the institutions.

 

Outcomes: Exploratory collaborative research in this area will lead to a research grant application to the Australian Research Council and ESRC networks programme leading to a substantial publication on Cosmopolitanism and Cooperation.

  

 

OXFORD-UPPSALA EXCHANGE:

An exchange of researchers and doctoral students took place in 2008 and 2009, funded by a grant of £56,000 from the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT). Avner Offer went to Uppsala in 2008. There was an exchange of students between Oxford and Uppsala in 2008-9 and Robert Evans and Robert Gildea went to Uppsala in the spring of 2009 to participate in lectures and seminars. 

EURHIST XX:

 
             1918, 1945, 1989

The MEHRC is one of ten specialist institutions in contemporary history in Europe which are members of Eurhist XX, the European Network for Contemporary History funded by a grant from the CNRS. The network exists primarily as a vehicle for joint applications to European sources of funding. A workshop was held on the Legacy and Memory of Communism in Europe in Paris in December 2007, there followed a comparative project on the three postwar periods (1918, 1945 and 1989).