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.