EARLY MODERN/EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Cultures of Knowledge: An Intellectual Geography of the Seventeenth-Century Republic of Letters
Oxford Coordinator: Howard Hotson
Research Partners: Academics from several disciplines within the Humanities Division of the University of Oxford, the Universities of Sheffield and Wales, and the Hungarian, Polish, and Czech Academies of Science; experts from Oxford University Library services. (Complete list)
Funding Bodies: The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Aims and Objectives: ‘Cultures of Knowledge’ is an interdisciplinary group of scholars working with partners in Britain and abroad to reconstruct the correspondence networks central to the revolutionary intellectual developments of the seventeenth century. The Project consists of four main strands:
One group is working to catalogue, edit, and preserve the rich archives of correspondence deposited in the Bodleian Library by leading Oxford men of science in the seventeenth century;
Another is collaborating with partners in Sheffield, Prague, Cracow, and Budapest to link and develop letter collections internationally;
A third group, based in Oxford University Library Services, is developing digital systems capable of organizing these materials into an online catalogue and archive of intellectual correspondence;
Finally, an international series of academic meetings is forging new intellectual frameworks and creating a modern scholarly community coextensive with the seventeenth-century networks under study.
The ultimate objective of ‘Cultures of Knowledge’ is to use the intellectual networks of the seventeenth century as a means of interconnecting international, interdisciplinary research in the broad and still poorly mapped-out field of seventeenth-century intellectual history. For full details, including information about our 2010 Oxford conference, see the
Project website:http://www.culturesofknowledge.org
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Re-imagining Democracy (2006-2010)
Vision of Tom Paine
Oxford Co-ordinators: Joanna Innes, Mark Philp.
Research partners: A British/Irish/French/Germany/US network including Bertrand Binoche of Paris I, Philippe Minard of ENS Rue d'Ulm, Paris/EHESS and Eckhart Hellmuth of Ludwig Maximilian Universität München.
Funding bodies: The Scientific and Technical Section of the French Embassy; the Maison Française Oxford; Politics Department Oxford.
Aims and objectives: the project has explored ways in which 'democracy' - or more broadly, government by and for the people - came to be relegitimated and reimagined as a plausible political objective between 1750 and 1850 (rarely having been accepted as a goal since the days of Greek democracy). It brought together intellectual, political and social historians to explore themes of common interest. It was concerned, on the one hand, with the changing conceptual apparatus brought to bear on government, with conceptual innovations (as in demands for transparency, accountability, representation and citizenship), initiating a new language of governance (which, in many respects, continues to shape public political discourse); on the other hand, with changes in public policy associated with the dramatic shift in state concerns from the fiscal-military to the support and management of their populations. Social change, both imagined and experienced, provided a context for these developments. ‘Equalisation of conditions’ in some dimensions was coupled with concerns about the rise of mass public opinion and associated threats to individuality, while at the same time many thought that there was in train a deepening of class divisions, producing extremes of wealth and poverty, as well as a workforce that was not disciplined within traditional patterns of deference.
Collaboration: Meetings were held in April 2005 and September 2006. A third took place in March 07, on the theme of 'Claims of Right'. This focused on the way in which the language of 'rights' was (or wasn't) used in formal political theorising, in a formal political context and in the context of less formal contestation, in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Britain and France. It held a workshop on American democracy in context, 1750-1850 at the Rothermere American Institute on 23-25 June, and Anglo-French workshops at the Maison Française, Oxford, on 1 July and in Paris in October 2008. A workshop in Munich in conjunction with the German Historical Institute, London, is planned for 9-10 Jan. 2009. A final conference on ‘Two Eras of Democracy: 1776-1818, 1830-48’ is being planned, with publications to follow. Joanna Innes and Mark Philp attended a conference on ‘The Origins of Democracy in Latin America’ at the Kellogg Institute, Notre Dame, Indiana, which was also a launch pad for a conference on the origins of democracy in Asia.
The network has also been developing links with Italian scholars, and in April 2010 attended a workshop "Advent of Democracy in Italy 1750-1850"organised for us in Pisa by Mauro Lenci (Politics Dept, Pisa University) and Pietro Finelli (Director, Casa Mazziniana).
Mark Philp( 2nd left) Pietro Finelli (far right)
There are aspirations to convene a further conference on the theme of Democracy in the Mediterranean, covering especially Spain, Italy and Greece.
Outcomes: An international network of historians has emerged which will consider further funding applications.
NINETEENTH CENTURY
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Religious Internationals in the Modern World (January 2009)
Oxford Co-ordinator: Abigail Green.
Research partner: KADOC-K. U. Leuven (Documentation and Research Centre for Religion, Culture and Society). Leuven co-ordinator: Vincent Viaene.
In cooperation with Amira Bennison, Christopher Clark and Michael Ledger-Lomas, Cambridge, and Simon Dixon, SSEES, London.
Funding Bodies: KADOC; John Fell Fund, the History Faculty and the Hebrew and Jewish Studies Unit, Oxford University.
Aims and objectives: The role of religion in international politics has brought the globalisation of religious ideologies and identities to the top of the 21st century agenda. The central idea behind this project is that the globalisation and politicisation of traditional religious identities is a historical phenomenon with deep roots in the 19th-20th centuries. The world’s major religions have always defied territorial or ethnic boundaries, but it is our contention that the modern era saw the emergence of a new and distinctive phenomenon: the religious international.
This new configuration drew upon traditional communal institutions and practices, while remaining distinct from them. It may be defined as a cluster of voluntary transnational organisations and representations crystallising around international issues, in which both “ordinary” believers and religious specialists could serve as protagonists. Spurred on by developments such as the communications and transportation revolutions, mass migration, colonial expansion, the spread of the nation-state model or the challenge of secular ideologies, the rise of religious internationals involved a double outward projection of religious energies: into modern society and into the global arena. It entailed the re-forging of religious identities in transatlantic or imperial encounters, and the emergence of new forms of sectarian politics, philanthropy and the press. In short, the interaction of traditional religious structures and identities with wider processes of political, social, cultural, technological and economic change promoted the transformation of communities of believers into communities of opinion. Thus religious aspects of identity assumed renewed importance, leading – ultimately – to the mobilisation and politicisation of religious identity on the world stage.
Bringing together experts on Buddhism, Christianity (Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox), Hinduism, Judaism, Islam and Spiritualism, the Oxford-Leuven workshop aims to provide a comparative and interdisciplinary forum in which to elaborate this research agenda. By transcending the ghettoisation that still besets much religious history, we hope to deepen our understanding of religion’s place in the history of globalisation.
Collaboration: An informal study day was held in January 2009.
A workshop "Religious Internationals in the Modern World" was held in 12-13th January 2009 bringing together scholars from seven countries with a view to elaborating the intellectual agenda. Publication of the proceedings is scheduled by Leuven University Press, and it is hoped that the collaboration will result in a major co-authored book.
Towards a New Understanding of Community, Nation and Empire in the Nineteenth Century
(April 2008- April 2009)
The Siege of Paris, 1870-1, by Meisonnier
A series of Three Workshops funded by The John Fell OUP Research Fund
Oxford Co-ordinators: Michael Broers, Robert Evans, David Hopkin, and Oliver Zimmer, with Ollie Douglas (Research Assistant)
Aims and objectives: To reassess dominant paradigms of nation-building and nationalism in nineteenth century Europe by exploring the multiplicity of forms of contemporary political organization, the flexibility and durability of non-nation-state structures such as empires, towns and local communities and the complex processes of redefinition and negotiation between state and society, and between Europe and the wider world.
Collaboration: During 2008 and 2009 three workshops were held, each addressing different facets of community, nation, and empire.
From Folk Culture to National Culture
David Hopkin led the first workshop, held on 11-12 April 2008.
The Nation in the Town: Nationalism and the Reshaping of Urban Communities in Europe, 1848-1914
The second workshop was led Oliver Zimmer and held on 26-27 September 2008.
Empires and Communities
Michael Broers and Robert Evans led the third workshop, held 0n 6-7 April 2009.
The intention was to bring together scholars working at the forefront of these various areas in order to develop a large and cutting-edge research project on ‘Relations between the Local and the Imperial’, which it is hoped will fund two postgraduate appointments and three research studentships.
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TWENTIETH CENTURY
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"Towards a New History of the League of Nations"
The history of the League of Nations is currently undergoing a renaissance and a scholarly reevaluation. The collapse of the bi-polar world order in the late eighties, combined with the emergence of the field of global history and the opening of key archives, prompted academics and policy-makers alike to return to the League in order to see how this earlier international organization sought to address problems of geopolitical competition and transnational risk not dissimilar to those we face today. The greatly under-used archives of the League of Nations has become the foundation for much of this new research. Exploitation of these archives, combined with research in other private and organizational archives, has yielded new scholarly insights into the history of internationalism. This network, funded by the Carnegie Corporation, New York provides the opportunity the opportunity to trace developments in this fast-paced and emergent field, and for scholars to exchange their work and ideas.
A workshop was held in Oxford in August 2010. For details see: "Towards a New History of The League of Nations"
Oxford Co-ordinator, and Professor Susan Pedersen, Professor of History, Columbia University.
Funding Body: Carnegie Corporation, New York
A conference and graduate workshop will be held in Geneva in August 2011. For details see: Conference Details
Scholars Currently Working on the History of the League of Nations around the world
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Historical Perspectives on Transnational Networks in Agriculture, Food, Environment and Health
June 2009
Oxford Co-ordinators: Patricia Clavin, Amalia Ribi.
Aims and objectives: The purpose of the two-day workshop, held in June 2009 at the Faculty of History, was to promote the work of young scholars in these fields and to establish meaningful concepts for the analysis of these processes. Arguing that issues of agriculture, food, environment and health are interlinked posed a particular challenge to notions of national sovereignty, the workshop aimed to explore the vitality of formal and informal co-operation in a global context. Through a range of explorative papers, the workshop offered a critical assessment of the collaboration between European and non-European actors thereby challenged conventional presentations of transnational co-operation as either a consistently progressive force or one that was shaped solely by Western hegemony.
Programme
Collaboration: The Modern European History Research Centre, University of Oxford in Co-operation with the Cluster of Excellence ‘Asia and Europe in a Global Context’ at the University of Heidelberg.
Outcome: Workshop Report
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Around 1968: Activism, Networks, Trajectories (March 2007 - April 2011)
Student demonstration, Copenhagen, 1968
Oxford coordinator: Robert Gildea
A failed political revolution that led to an enduring cultural revolution? A disastrous attack on ethical values in the name of drugs, free love and violence? The events of 1968 in cities across Europe have been represented in sharply contrasting narratives. Funded by a major grant from the AHRC, together with funding from the Leverhulme Trust and British Academy, a project based in Oxford’s Modern European History Research Centre (MEHRC) is considering 1968 as a historic moment between postwar austerity and the Thatcher-Reagan years. Its guiding themes are transnationalism and subjectivity: tracing the links between activists in different parts of Europe and collecting oral testimony which both models and subverts existing narratives. Histories of 1968 have hitherto concentrated on the epicentres of revolt in the democracies of France, West Germany and Italy, together with the United States. This project explores activism not only in the democracies (including Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands) but also in the dictatorships of southern Europe (Franco’s Spain, the Greece of the Colonels) and in the Communist dictatorships beyond the Iron Curtain (the GDR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the USSR). It will examine whether there was a common European ’68 or conflicting experiences, misunderstandings and time-lags between radical activity in different parts of Europe, and explore transnational links between European activists.
Conventionally, thinking about 1968 has been subsumed under one of two ‘grand narratives’: one that activism progressed from the political to the cultural, the other that it moved from youth culture to politics, from hedonism to Leninism. In this project the unit of analysis will be the network as spun by activists engaged in a variety of forms of activism: political, religious and those experimenting with artistic forms and alternative forms of living; violent and non-violent; tackling questions of gender and the relationship between intellectuals and workers. The project is undertaking life-history interviews with former activists belonging to these networks in order to explore how far their accounts reflect the dominant narratives and how far they challenge and subvert familiar stories.
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MADRID WORKSHOP MARCH 2010
The project is being undertaken by an International team of historians fourteen strong.
These are:
Rebecca Clifford, Lecturer in History, University of Swansea, working on Italy John Davis, Fellow and Praelector in Modern History and Politics and Lecturer in History, University of Oxford, working on England; Juliane Fürst, Lecturer in History, University of Bristol, working on the Soviet Union; Robert Gildea, Professor of Modern History, University of Oxford, working on France; Gudni Jóhannesson, Associate professor, school of law & school of business, Reykjavik University, working on Iceland; Anna-Maria VON DER GOLTZ, Junior Research Fellow, Magdalen College, University of Oxford, working on the two Germanies; James Mark, Lecturer in History, University of Exeter, working on Hungary; Piotr Oseka, Associate Professor, Institute of Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, working on Poland Niek Pas, Professor of Media and Culture, University of Amsterdam, working on the Netherlands; Chris Reynolds, Lecturer in French and European Studies, Nottingham Trent University, working on Northern Ireland; Nigel Townson, Senior Lecturer in History, Faculty of Sociology and Political Science, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, working on Spain; Oldřich Tuma, Professor and Director of the Institute for Contemporary History, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, working on Czechoslovakia; , Polymeris Voglis, Lecturer in History, University of Thessaly, working on Greece; and Anette Warring, Professor of History, Department of History and Social Theory, University of Roskilde, working on Denmark.
The project has hugely benefited from the advice of Professor Shelia Rowbotham, Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester, former activist and acclaimed author of Promise of a Dream (2000).
The researchers have met in four annual workshops, separately funded by the Leverhulme Trust and British Academy, meeting at Oxford in 2007, Roskilde in 2008, [...] Prague in 2009 and Madrid in 2010. A fifth workshop will take place in Oxford in 2011. The project is publishing a series of articles in a special number of Cultural and Social History and will bring out a book, with Oxford University Press, revolving around the themes of becoming an activist, being an activist, and making sense of activism. A major legacy of the project will be a database of activists and networks containing the sound files of several hundred interviews together with transcriptions [...] These will be available in due course to historians of 1968.
Funding bodies: The Leverhulme Trust and British Academy are funding five annual workshops in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. The AHRC is funding fieldwork by the UK researchers, interviews and the construction of a database.
Aims and objectives: To undertake a fully comparative study of the years 1965-75 in fourteen European countries, concentrating less on social movements than on individuals’ engagement with activism, building of political and lifestyle networks, and their trajectories though these years into other forms of activism, and their coming to terms with the experiences of activism.
Collaboration: A series of five annual international workshops: the first was held in Oxford on 15-18 March 2007, the second in Roskilde on 24-27 April 2008 [...] in Roskilde, the third in Prague on 2-5 April 2009, the fourth in Madrid on 18-21 March 2010. A fifth workshop will be held in Oxford in April 2011.
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PRAGUE WORKSHOP APRIL 2009 |
Outcomes: A collectively written work on ‘Around 1968’ and a series of articles highlighted by transnational study and oral history. The construction of a database of a cross-section of activist in each country, with interviews transcribed and translated.
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(De)Europeanisation and History: Concepts, Conflicts, Cohesion since 1890
(Dec 2006 - September 2008)
Adenauer and De Gaulle at Reims, 1962
Oxford coordinator: Martin Conway
The Oxford members of the research team are Tom Buchanan, Jane Caplan, Patricia Clavin, Martin Conway (who is the co-director of the project with Kiran Patel) John Davis, Jose Harris, Jessica Wardhaugh and William Whyte.
Research partner: Humboldt University, Berlin. Team leader Kiran Klaus Patel
Funding bodies: jointly by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and German Research Council (DFG)
Aims and objectives: The Europeanisation History Network aims at developing and elaborating a historical concept of (de)Europeanisation as a heuristic and analytical tool reflecting the complexities, contradictions and frictions of Europeanisation as a historical phenomenon. By focusing on developments of transfer and exchange, emulation and delimitation, the concept of (de)Europeanisation moves beyond national and comparative history. Building on existing notions of Europeanisation, it will advance historians’ ability to analyze continuity and change, convergence and delimitation in modern Europe.
Collaboration: A series of four joint seminars, the first was held in Oxford on 15-16 December 2006, the second in Berlin on 20-21 May 2007.It held its two final workshops in Oxford in December 2007 and in Fiesole in September 2008. Each of these workshops was devoted to discussions of draft papers which will appear in the collective volume arising from the project, provisionally entitled, The Problem of Europe, which will be published by Palgrave.
For more information see the project website on: www.europeanisation.org
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Development and Security in World History, 1919-1969
Oxford coordinator: Patricia Clavin
Research partner: Sunil Amrith, Birkbeck University.
Aims and objectives: This project seeks to recover the lost history of ‘development’, tracing it to the interaction between European and Asian ideas and practices. It will explore a range of international, transnational and imperial networks and institutions, and will rethink international history in the first half of the twentieth century.
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The Documentation of Individual Identity:Historical and Comparative Perspectives since 1500 (IdentiNet).
(September 2009)
Oxford coordinator: Jane Caplan
Research partner: Edward Higgs, Essex University
Funding bodies: Leverhulme Trust
Aims and objectives: This project investigates the history and practice of identification, registration and pigeon-holing.
Collaboration: It brings together 25 scholars worldwide from history and the social sciences, and its first conference was held in Oxford on 26-27 Sept 2008.
See website at http://identinet.org.uk
CONFERENCE HELD : Oxford 26-27 Sept 2009
‘Identifying the Person: Past, Present, and Future’
for further details see http://identinet.org.uk/workshops/2009-workshop/.
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Making Order in the Postwar World: A Comparative Study of Europe and East Asia in the 1940s and 1950s
Hiroshima, Genbaku Dome
Oxford coordinators: Martin Conway, Tom Buchanan, Rana Mitter
Research partners: the History Department, Princeton University: Jan Gross, Sheldon Garon, and Philip Nord
Funding bodies: Oxford-Princeton Partnership Fund
Aims and objectives: To pioneer a truly comparative study of two “secondary” regions in the early Cold War period (W/E Europe, East Asia) and provide stimulating comparisons and contrasts that will enrich research in the fields of social and cultural history.
Collaboration: A series of seminars and workshops, held in Oxford and Princeton, which seeks to deepen research links between the History Departments of both institutions. Weekly Oxford/Princeton seminars took place in Michaelmas Terms 2005 and 2006 on Reconstruction in Europe and East Asia after 1945. Speakers from Princeton spoke at Oxford during both seminar programmes. An Oxford/Princeton workshop was held 17-18 March 2006 in Princeton covering a variety of case studies in comparative reconstruction (including Greece, France, Belgium, Japan, Germany and China) A second workshop was held in Oxford 22-23 March 2007 covering a variety of themes including gender, consumerism, and comparative social history, widely-defined.
Outcomes: It is hoped to produce a volume of essays from among the presentations made at the workshops, and to institute research links in modern history more widely between Oxford and Princeton.
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Violence in the Twentieth Century
Armenian Massacre, 1915
Oxford coordinator: Robert Gerwarth
Research partners: the History Department, University of Edinburgh, the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (Nedelands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, or NIOD) in Amsterdam, and the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence.
Funding bodies: the British Academy, British Council, Research Development Fund / John Fell Fund, Oxford University, the European University Institute.
Aims and objectives: to stimulate discussions about ways in which current archival research and new comparative and trans-national approaches can transform and enrich our understanding of political violence in twentieth-century Europe.
Collaboration: A series of four workshops, the first on Terrorism in twentieth-century Europe, held in Oxford on 30 Sept-1 Oct 2005; the second on genocide, held in Edinburgh on 1-2 September 2006; the third on war at the EUI in Florence on 29 September-1 October 2006; and a fourth on revolution and counter-revolution at the NIOD in March 2007. A final workshop was held at Luneborg in September 2008, at which draft chapters of the multi-authored volume which will result from the project were presented. Martin Conway acts as the MEHRC co-ordinator of the project.
Outcomes: Publication of papers from the Terrorism workshop in a special issue of European Review of History (2007) and an edited book (currently under review by Cambridge University Press).
Useful links:
The University of Oslo History department
The Maison Française in Oxford
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