We are thrilled to announce the eight International APH PhD Conference: The Mobility of Politics, The Politics of Mobility. 7-9 June, 2023. Padua, Italy.
In recent years, a lively interdisciplinary dialogue has developed between the so-called mobility studies and the humanities, broadly involving historiography as well. Over the past five years, the Padua department hosting this conference has developed a project exploring the “mobility paradigm” from a variety of humanistic perspectives. The project culminated in the creation of a Centre for Advanced Studies in Mobility and the Humanities (Mohu) and a digital humanities laboratory (MobiLab).
Many lines of enquiry in political history open up if we focus on how mobility and circulation have affected political experiences over the last two hundred years in different areas: from the circulation of political ideas and texts to migration policies; from the transnational exchange of political practices and activism, to the proliferation of political institutions and ideologies.
We are seeking abstracts from graduate students that tackle these topics as imaginatively and broadly as possible. Takes on the topic include, but are by no means restricted to:
Mobility of politics
How did the circulation of ideas and practices contribute to the formation of political movements, cultures, ideologies and institutions?
How did the dissemination, translation and manipulation of texts contribute to the construction and transformation of the political sphere?
Politics of mobility
In which ways did politics directed, managed, impeded or transformed the mobility of women, men, ideas and goods?
Programme
The Association for Political History has been created in September 2014 for promoting Political History, broadly defined as the history of institutions, parties, public policies as well as the history of ideas, political cultures, identities, behaviours, passions or emotions. APH welcomes historians working from different perspectives, including the most recent and innovative ones. One of the main goals of APH is to strengthen international cooperation in the field of education and research, thus promoting the quality of research. Furthermore APH provide high-quality training opportunities for PhD candidates and advanced masters students in Political History.
The next international PhD conference of APH will take place at the University of Padua, Italy, from Wednesday, 7th June to Friday, 9th June, 2023. APH invites PhD students from participating, but also from other institutions to apply and present their dissertations to their peers and to senior scholars from member universities, as well as to external commentators and keynote speakers.
In addition to the panel meetings, where PhD students will be able to introduce their papers, discussing them with a senior researcher and another PhD student, several events will also take place: two keynote presentations and a final round table. The full programme of events will be available soon.
The conference welcomes proposals for papers approaching the relationship between mobility and political history from a variety of perspectives. Welcome approaches include, to name just a few: institutional, conceptual, social, cultural, gender, anthropological, transnational and comparative. The main historical periods dealt with are expected to be the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, with no geographical limitations.
Application
The deadline for applications, to include a 250–400 words abstract, University affiliation and a statement explaining how the paper relates to the PhD project, is 10th of March 2023. Applications must be sent by e-mail to aphconference2023@gmail.com. Acceptance will be confirmed by the 20th of March.
Following acceptance, a paper not exceeding 5,000 words must be submitted to the conference organisers by the 25th of May 2023 at the latest. The papers will be made available to the other participants by publishing them on a private website over the following week. Participants are kindly requested to add a brief introduction to their papers for those who may be unfamiliar with the period, country, organisation or topic of study. Oral presentations of papers during the conference must not exceed 15 minutes, with the remainder of the time devoted to comments and general discussion.
Costs
Participating institutions need to cover their doctoral students’ travel and accommodation costs, but we expect to provide all meals and a social programme. APH could also provide some scholarships to cover travel costs. There will be no registration fees.
Organising committee
Giulia Albanese, Enrico Francia, Federico Mazzini, Matteo Millan, Carlotta Sorba
The Research School for Political History (RSPH) aims to offer PhD students in the history of politics and the political a high-quality training program supervised by some of the leading scholars in the low countries. The RSPH training program is open to all PhDs based in the Netherlands, Flanders or affiliated with the Zentrum für Niederlande-Studien in Münster, conducting research in the broad field of political history, history of international relations, conflict studies, military history, area studies, global history, and other subdisciplines in premodern and modern history with an emphasis on politics. We offer an extensive curriculum of in-depth tutorials and workshops, focusing on the historiographical, thematic, conceptual and methodological aspects of political history in general and your PhD project in particular. In addition to this, considerable attention is paid to professionalization and transferable skills. The RSPH is dedicated to creating a research environment which brings you into contact with fellow PhD candidates at other universities, postdocs and senior researchers in the field of political history. We provide excellent network and platform facilities for all researchers in political history, whether ambitious to pursue a career inside or outside academia. The RSPH program for PhD students offers training in the following competencies:
Disciplinarily and Interdisciplinary: Students have an informed and critical awareness of the historical and conceptual underpinnings and contexts of political history as an intellectual tradition and academic discipline, and of its relationship to other fields of study. They have knowledge and understanding of the foundations and insights of other disciplines relevant to the study of political history.
Theories and concepts: Students have specialized knowledge and critical understanding of theoretical, conceptual and analytical notions relevant to political history. They can reflect on the principal theoretical approaches to political history, evaluate the state of the art in political history, and recognize and develop innovative research orientations in political history.
Methods and techniques: Students have focused knowledge and critical understanding of relevant methods and techniques for the study of political history, and the ability to apply proper methods and techniques to research problems. Students have an advanced and critical understanding of sources and data for political-historical research and their associated conceptual frameworks.
Communication: Students have an informed and critical awareness of the specific methods used to communicate information about one’s field in scholarly/academic and public contexts. They can use and apply the proper means of communication, suited to the aims of their scholarly and public interventions.
Professional Development: Students have an informed and critical awareness of the concrete ways that the political-historical perspective can be developed in professional situations and be of benefit to society.
2022-2023 Program:
The program is structured in accordance with the end terms and competencies: • Tutorials in year 1 discuss disciplinarily and Interdisciplinary, theories and concepts, and methods and techniques on an advanced level • Workshops in year 2 are devoted to the application of methods and techniques, disciplinarily and interdisciplinary, and introduce international outreach and science communication. • Seminars in years 3 and 4 are devoted to the individual application and assessment of disciplinarily and Interdisciplinary, theories and concepts, methods and techniques as well as science communication and professional development.
Opening of the Academic year – the history of ‘ordinary citizens’ and their relation to power
Date: 23 September 2022 Location: Trippenhuis, Amsterdam Time: 13.00 – 18.00 (including drinks) The beginning of a new academic year is marked by the annual RSPH opening event. The theme of this year’s opening is writing the history of “ordinary citizens” and their relation to power. Harm Kaal (Radboud University) and Marnix Beyen (University of Antwerp) will deliver an introduction, after which journalist and author Marcia Luyten will give a lecture and discuss the theme. Before the plenary thematic session, there will be a meet & greet for all PhDs enrolled in the school. For PhD candidates at the start of their trajectory, this is the moment to get acquainted with the program, and meet the program directors and fellow PhDs. For advanced PhD candidates, the event offers the opportunity to catch up with each other and make plans for the coming year. As a bonus, the thematic session following the meet & greet offers a sneak preview of the summer school scheduled at the end of the academic year. This summer school is open to both RMA and PhD students.
Year One: Tutorials
B.1 Introduction to the Discipline: What is Political History? Supervisor: prof. dr. Ido de Haan (Utrecht University) Date: 28 October 2022 In this tutorial, we will discuss the very general, yet at the same time crucial question ‘what is political history?’ The discipline of political history has changed quite dramatically in the last couple of decades. From a well-established, yet also rather stuffy history of national political institutions, it has become a vibrant study of the political as it manifests itself in a variety of places and a multiplicity of forms, and is informed by various disciplines, ranging from law and philosophy to political science and anthropology. In this tutorial, we discuss reflections on the history of ‘the political’ and invite you to reflect on your use of the term, how your research is a contribution to an interdisciplinary political history, and how you account for processes like politicization and depoliticization.
B.2 Crucial Concepts in Political History Supervisors: prof.dr. Annelien DeDijn (Utrecht University) and dr. Karin van Leeuwen (Maastricht University) Date: 18 November 2022 Despite their crucial importance for defining a subject, concepts often receive only little attention in historical research projects. While the lessons on conceptual change learnt from scholars such as Koselleck and Skinner have resulted in the establishment of an entire subfield of conceptual history, many historians working on politics in practice are easily tempted to leave conceptual reflections entirely to these specialists. Yet, it is hard to imagine research projects in political history that do not in one or another way engage with concepts such as power, violence, rule of law, institutions, identity, colony, democracy, ideology, representation etc. PhDs working on international topics, like the history of international relations, often do work with concepts, often borrowed from the social sciences. In this tutorial, we will briefly introduce you to the various ways in which both historians and social scientists deal with the challenge to define and/or reflect upon their central concepts, and invite you to reflect upon the concepts central to your research project.
B.3 Methods and Techniques in Political History Supervisors: prof.dr. Dirk Jan Wolffram (University of Groningen) and dr. Joris Gijsenbergh (Radboud University) Date: 12 January 2023 This tutorial is dedicated to research methods: the trajectory from historiographical debate through research questions to an effective research strategy. In this interactive tutorial, the central questions are: what is the use of historical methodology, what is your methodological approach, how does your topic legitimize your research methods, and what are the major methodological challenges of your research project? In the tutorial, PhD candidates reflect on the aforementioned questions, present their most urgent methodological bottleneck and try to find the best strategy to solve their problems together with other PhD candidates and senior researchers.
B.4 Sources in Political History Supervisor: dr. Marijke van Faassen (Huygens ING) Date: 10 February 2023 The increasing use of digital techniques for researching both analogue and digital texts, archival sources and data clouds requires a new research methodology in which traditional knowledge is closely interwoven with digital skills. In this tutorial, an interdisciplinary team of political historians and information scientists will use case studies from their research to provide insight into this current methodological discussion and to more practically discuss ways to find, criticize, contextualise and finally prepare such complex sources to use them for research. To prepare for the tutorial, the PhD-students are requested to write a text in which they describe the digital and ‘paper’ sources they use in their research and reflect on the advantages and disadvantages of using them. During the tutorial, there will be ample time to interactively discuss the problems they experience and to create awareness for alternative sources to work around the problems they face.
B.5 Themes in Political History: governmentality and gender Supervisor: prof. dr. Geertje Mak (University of Amsterdam) Date: 10 March 2023 In the final tutorial of the year, we bring together conceptualizations of the political, relevant concepts for the study of politics, methodologies and sources, by focusing on a specific theme in political history. Based on readings and presentations by senior researchers, the participants will practice the integration of these various aspects of research in political history in a coherent research outline. This year’s tutorial departs from Foucault’s notion of governmentality – the capacity of any administration to direct and transform the people governed. Crucial to this notion is that you cannot govern people when you do not know them, but you cannot know them if you don’t have any control over them. Power and knowledge (over people) are thus entangled. As James Scott explained in his seminal Seeing like a State, reordering the population and the land is a necessary precondition for rule or ‘development’. Therefore, categorizations – even in very mundane techniques of administration – are key to governmentality (see for example Peter Miller and Nikolas Rose Governing the Present). For this tutorial, we specifically consider the crucial role of gender and sexuality in colonial categorizations.
Year Two: Workshops
B.6 Advanced Thesis Design: justifying your choices Supervisor: dr. Anne Heyer (Leiden University) and dr. Carla Hoetink (Radboud University) Date: 21 October 2022 This Workshop poses the question: ‘What exactly am I doing and how can that be justified?’. Based on a short, advanced paper on the methodology of their projects, PhD students explore opportunities, challenges and limitations of their theoretical and methodological choices, and alternatives presented and discussed in class.
B.7 Interdisciplinary Approaches Supervisor: dr. Iva Pesa (University of Groningen) and dr. Christian Wicke (Utrecht University) Date: 25 November 2022 This Workshop looks beyond the limits of the discipline of political history. How do/can other scientific disciplines inspire and inform political history research? Which debates outside the confines of political history are of interest, and to which debates can your PhD project contribute? We will look at relevant examples of interdisciplinarity in political history research, for example, political anthropology and political economy approach.
B.8 Internationalization Supervisor: prof.dr. Jacco Pekelder (Zentrum für Niederlande-Studien, Münster) Date: 20-21 January OR 17-18 February 2023 Please note: this two-day Workshop takes place in Münster (Germany) and will include a social program As a professional historian, you will have to present your research both in national and international print and at conferences. You will also want to be able to organize (international) seminars yourself. This two-day Workshop is meant to learn you how to present yourself and your research in an international context. This Workshop will result in a proposal for a symposium or a conference panel, co-created with one or two fellow PhD candidates.
B.9 Advanced Thesis Design: presenting and defending Supervisor: dr. Maartje Janse (Leiden University) and Jan Julia Zurné (Radboud University) Date: 21 April 2023 This Workshop focuses on effectively presenting your PhD project before an audience of senior political history scholars and experts in your field, and responding to comments, feedback and essential critique.The emphasis is on academic debate, Q&A and presentation technique.
Year Three: Seminars
B.10 Outreach and Communication Supervisor: prof.dr. Dirk Jan Wolffram (Groningen University) and dr. Adriejan van Veen (Radboud University Nijmegen) Date: 4 November 2022 This seminar is dedicated to the science outreach and communication – vis-à-vis both academia and the public at large – of the individual PhD projects of the participants. Invited speakers from academia, publishing, and journalism will provide information and share experiences on publishing a PhD thesis, presenting scientific results for a larger audience, and publishing in scientific journals.
B.11 Applied History and Current Affairs Supervisor: dr. Harm Kaal (Radboud University), Stefan Couperus (University of Groningen) and Beatrice de Graaf (Utrecht University) Date: 24 February 2023 This Workshop has a dual goal. First of all, it invites PhD students to reflect on the links between their research project, their research methodologies, and current affairs. Students are asked to rethink the relevance and the methodologies of their project from the perspective of current social and political concerns. What is the ‘big question’ that you are trying to respond to? Second, in interaction with people working in the sphere of policy-making, heritage, the press and think tanks students reflect on how they can develop methods of ‘applied history’, how their research can be considered ‘usable history’ for others outside academia, and/or how they may present their academic skills and knowledge to the world beyond academia, also with an eye towards their post-PhD-career.
B.12 Professional Development Supervisor: dr. Carla Hoetink (Radboud University Nijmegen) and dr. Margit van der Steen (Huygens ING) Date: 14 April 2023 This final seminar is dedicated to knowledge utilization, CV, finding your way to or creating research consortia and –networks, preparing for grant applications, and career opportunities outside academia. RSPH alumni will share their insights and experiences with you, their successes and – more often – their misfortunes.
How to register:
The PhD training program is open to all PhD candidates in the field of political history that are based in the Netherlands, Flanders or affiliated with the Zentrum für Niederlande-Studien in Münster. We explicitly welcome external PhDs too. In most instances, the Graduate School of your home university takes care of your registration as soon as you indicate you want to join the RSPH. If this is not the case, or if you have any further questions regarding your enrolment, please contact us via bureau@onderzoekschoolpolitiekegeschiedenis.nl. Please include the following information in your e-mail: • Your full name • Your home university • The title and a brief description of your PhD project • The names of your supervisor(s)
Work load, credits and certificates:
As a member of the RSPH PhD community, we assume you are willing to take full advantage of our training program. We highly recommend you follow all the tutorials and workshops on offer in year 1 and year 2 of your trajectory, given the structure of the program and the building up of competencies. This recommendation also goes for the seminars in year 3 of the training program, devoted to deepening your skills as well as to professional development. Participation in other RSPH events is optional (see schedule above). As standard, each training activity (tutorial, workshop or seminar) is awarded with 1 ECTS for preparation and active participation. Unless stated otherwise, these training activities consists of a 3–4-hour meeting with an open discussion based on the input and research interests of the participants. Active participation is considered self-evident. Each activity requires preparation in the form of reading literature, writing a preparatory paper of ca 750 words according to the assignment given. Often you are asked to prepare in advance for commenting on the papers of your peers. If you wish to earn more (or less) credits, a specific arrangement will be made in consultation with the director of studies of the RSPH. In case you wish to consider this, please send us a reasoned proposal via bureau@onderzoekschoolpolitiekegeschiedenis.nl. At the end of the program, each participant will receive a certificate, specifying the credits that have been obtained. In general, the school offers three types of certificates: • Basic (10 ECTS) • Regular (20 ECTS) • Advanced (30 ECTS)
In addition to our training program, PhDs are warmly invited to take part in other events organized by or in close cooperation with the RSPH, e.g. master classes, seminars and conferences. Stay informed of our activities by visiting our website or subscribing to our newsletter.
Global History today forms a vibrant field of research. It explores how societies in different parts of the world were shaped by global entanglements and reveals that globalization is by no means a new phenomenon but has a history that goes well back until the Early Modern period. It involves historical processes such as European expansion and imperialism on the one hand, but also the ways European societies have been influenced by influx of ideas, raw materials, plants, animals and peoples from other continents. Theoretically, the field has been recently enriched by conceptualizations of for example the Anthropocene or the planetary perspective. To put it short, global history argues that we cannot understand the birth of our contemporary world without historically examining transregional interaction.
Aimed at PhD Candidates at any stage of their research, the 2022 Summer School in Global History is organized by a network of established scholars from the fields of global, imperial and transnational history as well as area studies coming from six leading European research universities (Aarhus, Bern, King’s College London, Oslo, Paris and Tübingen). It will focus on the theme of Transformative Connectivity, i.e. on the transformations that global entanglements provoked in different societies across the globe on the one hand and the ways actors and institutions which established these entanglements were in turn shaped by such processes of globalization.
Identities are powerful drives in human history. They build the understanding of the world of all human actors, and inevitably affect their actions. Both collective and individual identities are – now as ever – key features of all political activities. The creation and the control of identities are at the heart of all power relations, and as such they have been deeply investigated by human sciences. Indeed, political historians encounter the performative power of identities in most of their research. Nevertheless, they rarely find spaces to debate on identity issues and the tools needed to understand them. The main goal of the Florentine session of the 5th Workshop of the Political History PhD Network is to provide such space.
Since the cultural turn, the constructivist stance has been crucial in historiography. The seminal works of Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm questioned ethnical and national identities, while E.P. Thompson with his The making of the English working class inaugurated the investigation on the construction of class identities. In the meantime, gender studies have shown the cultural nature of gender identities. More recently, studies on personal identification have revealed the close relation between political power and the control of personal identities. In any case, it remains clear that it is not possible to conduct research on political history without questioning the identities used by both the historical actors and the historical observers as ourselves.
We encourage applications on topics including (but not limited to) the following areas:
The construction of identity as a political process
Performative identity: how collective identities influence politics (and vice versa)
Gender identities in question
Reframing national identity with transnational/global/diaspora case studies
Practices of personal identification throughout history
Identities in motion: borders and movements
Practical Information
Proposals for papers should include a title, an abstract of maximum 300 words, and a short CV of the presenter. Please send proposals to phdpolhis@gmail.com before 30 June 2019. Notification of acceptance will be announced before 15 July. Participants are expected to submit a 3.000 – 5.000 words paper ahead of the workshop by 15 September. Limited funding is available for travel reimbursements. Participants whose travel costs are not covered by any other institution and who wish to apply for a reimbursement should indicate this on their application.
For further information and questions please contact us at phdpolhis@gmail.com, join the Political History PhD Network on Linkedin and sign up for our monthly newsletter by writing us an email.
The second session of the 5th Workshop for PhD Candidates in Political History is organised thanks to the contribution of the European University Institute, the Autonomous University of Madrid and the University of Padua.
The question of what is political seems like a banal one as it is such an obvious part of our everyday lives and experiences. Most of us follow politics and are dependent on the political institutions defining the framework we operate within. But are historians taking the concept of politics for granted? Is politics too often understood only as parties and parliaments? The first session of the fifth annual workshop of the Political History PhD Network focuses on the meaning and understanding of politics. We invite PhD Students to discuss the complexities of the concept of political in the field of political history.
Politics is a subject that gathers and unites academics from different backgrounds and traditions. Historians interested in politics have studied, among other things, ideas, intellectuals, political cultures, parliamentary rhetoric, and social movements. But what are we talking about when we talk about politics? The analytical nature of politics should be one of the defining subjects of debate in the field of political history, enabling scholars of different subjects, cultures, and eras to participate in a shared theoretical and methodological discussions. We believe that such discussions would enrich the field of political history.
The tradition of political history practised in the University of Jyväskylä has traditionally emphasised the political in political history, a result of multidisciplinary co-operation with political science and applied linguistics. An inclusive understanding of the nature of politics is one of the founding principles of the political history practiced in Jyväskylä. Hence we encourage the participants of the first session of the 2019 Political History PhD Network Workshop to submit papers on the following themes:
Political and politics as analytical concepts
Historical uses of the concepts of political and politics
Differing understandings of the nature of politics
Political agents, movements, parties, and ideas
Transnational and global influences
Politics – continuity and change in the long term
Practical Information
Proposals for papers should include the title, an abstract of maximum 300 words, and a short CV of the applicant. Please send proposals to phdpolhis@gmail.com before 15 February 2019. Notification of acceptance will be announced before the 15 March. Participants are expected to submit a 3 000 – 5 000 word paper ahead of the workshop by 10 June. An amount of funding is available for travel reimbursements. Participants who wish to apply for a reimbursement should indicate this on their application.
For further information and questions please contact us at phdpolhis@gmail.com and visit our website. We also encourage you to join the Political History PhD Network on Linkedin, and sign up for our monthly newsletter by writing us an email.
13:15 – 13:45 Registration (room 026) 13:45 – 14:00 Words of welcome
14:00 – 16:00 Parallel session I
Panel 1. The crafts of power. Observing, stratifying and condemning populations room 023C Chair: Remzi Çağatay Çakırlar (Leiden)
Joonas Tammela (Jyväskylä): Legitimation of Heavenly and Earthly Power: Local Sermons as a Mediator of the Societal Values in Swedish Realm, 1790–1820
Cristiana Plamadeala (Paris): On Dossierveillance and Collaboration with the Securitate, Romania’s Secret Police in the Communist Period (1945-89)
Sandrine Maulini (Geneva): The demands of former administrative inmates and children in out-of-home care: a crisis of legitimacy in Switzerland?
Panel 2. Signs of the times. Questions of legitimacy in periods of change Room 025 Chair: Iva Vukusic (Utrecht)
Raisa Blommestijn (Leiden): The step-in-the-back myth. Reconceiving Weimar’s legitimacy
Maja Lukanc (Ljubljana): The legitimation of communist power: Comparative cases of post-war Poland and Yugoslavia (1944-1948)
Pierre Botcherby (Warwick): Seeking continuity in a period of change: resisting industrial decline and postindustrial regeneration in St. Helens, Merseyside
16:00 – 16:30 Coffee break (room 026)
16:30 – 18:00 Key note panel: The question of legitimacy Room 025
Maartje Janse, Anne Petterson & Elisabeth Dieterman (Leiden)
19:00 Dinner (Malle Jan) app. 21:00 Social programme
Thomas Ashby (Florence/Leiden): Resisting Satan: Algernon Sidney contra the House of Stuart, the invasion plot of 1664-1666
Catherine Hulse (London): Legitimising representative popular power: the ‘paradox’ of Sieyès and Roederer?
Arthur Ghins (Cambridge): A liberal view on democracy: Benjamin Constant on sovereignty, representative government and political liberty
Shane Little (Loughborough): The anarchism of Josiah Warren: Sovereignty of the individual and experiments in utopian living
Panel 4. The imaginary dominium. Identity constructs and aesthetic representations as sources of legitimacy room 025 Chair: Wouter Linmans (Leiden)
Fons Meijer (Nijmegen): Establishing a Dutch consensus culture: Representations of Dutch monarchs in times of disaster, c.1807-1861
Nathalia Schomerus (Potsdam): Viewpoints of National Liberals on legitimacy in 19th century Germany
Rohit Dutta Roy (Cambridge): Right to govern and the construction of epistemic authority: History as a source of Political Legitimacy in late-nineteenth and twentieth-century India
Marvin Menniken (Berlin): War veteran morality and the nation: The American Legion in twentieth-century U.S. politics
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch
13:00 – 15:00 Parallel session III
Panel 5. Reading revolts against the grain. The legitimation of dissent room 023C Chair: Larissa Schulte Nordholt (Leiden)
Ivan Gracia (Barcelona): Legitimacy and popular violence in a catholic city: Barcelona during the Reapers’ Revolt (1640)
Oscar Broughton (Berlin): Redefining construction: Legitimacy and the National Guilds League
Juho Saksholm (Jyväskylä): The Nordic 1968: Transnational discourses on the legitimacy of dissent
Panel 6. Communicative challenges. Or how to mediate legitimacy room 025 Chair: Alp Yenen
Jonas Stephan (Münster): Security, authority and legitimacy. The art of doing politics in the Holy Roman Empire after the Peace of Westphalia
Zachris Haaparinne (Jyväskylä): The virtues and ideals of parliamentary representation and political participation
Chris Monnox (Australia): Legitimising party: Public meetings and party politics in Australia, 1910-1929
Sara Mirahmadi (Leiden): Ideological usage of poetry in the Jāmi’ al-Tavārīkh
The Pursuit of Legitimacy. Power and its manifestations in political history
4th Workshop for PhD Candidates in Political History 25 -26 October 2018, Leiden University, the Netherlands
Application deadline: 1 April 2018
Some political questions are never to be solved. The question of legitimacy is one of these issues that keep pressing themselves on history. How the wielding of political power is justified and contested hangs over the past as an open-ended question. Legitimacy may therefore very well be one of the great themes of political history. In the 4th annual workshop of the Political History PhD Network, PhDs from all over the world are invited to present their work and discuss this crucial question, thereby contributing to new historiographical perspectives on legitimacy.
Throughout history, legitimacy has been a contested concept. It was open to debate and dependent on mediation. As a political question, legitimacy was at play at intersections of different ideological outlooks. The issue of what constitutes a legitimate exercise of power, or a legitimate cause for revolt and resistance, engages all levels and spheres of political activity, from the individual actor to, for instance, the global structures of imperialism. The question of legitimacy therefore touches upon all the core themes of political history, including the topics of continuity and change, the workings of institutions, the dynamics of conflict, the functioning of networks, the spread of ideas, and the performativity of power. In encompassing these subjects, this workshop aims to bring together historians working on diverse periods and places.
The workshop’s central questions are: how did historical actors try to legitimate new capacities of power? How did discourses of legitimacy determine the shape and functioning of political organizations? In what ways was legitimacy depicted, imagined and acted out? How did understandings of legitimacy relate to notions of illegitimacy? How were dominant readings of legitimacy contested? How was legitimacy mediated between different settings and groups of people? Together, these questions should help us to grasp the multitude of ways in which historical actors thought about and engaged with legitimacy as a central issue of political activity.
We encourage applications on topics including (but not limited to) the following areas:
Theories of legitimacy
Diplomacy and legitimacy
Legitimacy in official and societal organizations
Discourses and depictions of illegitimacy
The legitimacy of violence and political resistance
Legitimacy amidst continuity and change
Practical Information
Proposals for papers should include the title, an abstract of maximum 300 words, and a short CV of the presenter. Please send proposals to phdpolhis@gmail.com before April 1st, 2018. Notification of acceptance will be announces before the end of April. Participants are expected to submit a 3.000 – 5.000 words paper ahead of the workshop by 25 September. A limited amount of funding is available for travel reimbursements. Participants who wish to apply for a reimbursement should indicate this on their application.
For further information and questions please contact us at phdpolhis@gmail.com, join the Political History PhD Network on Linkedin and sign up for our monthly newsletter by writing us an email!
Remzi Çağatay Çakırlar, Universiteit Leiden Wouter Klem, Universiteit Utrecht Erik de Lange, Universiteit Utrecht Lauren Lauret, Universiteit Leiden
