Tag Archives: 2018

The APH welcomes Carlotta Sorba #newmember

The Association for Political History welcomes Prof. Dr. Carlotta Sorba as new member to the Board.

Carlotta Sorba (1959) is Professor in Contemporary European History within the Department of History, Geography and the Ancient world at the University of Padua, Italy. She obtained her first degree in Blogna and er PhD in Turin. Since 2012 she is the director of the CSC (Interuniversity Center of Cultural History) founded by a convention between the University of Padua, Bologna, Venice, Pisa and Verona.

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Political History PhD Network | Workshop 2018 Call for Papers

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

International PhD Conference | 2018 | Call for Papers

6th International PhD Conference | Sciences Po, Paris, 20–22 June 2018

Call for Papers
Deadline 12 March 2018 (extended)

The Association for Political History (APH) 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, such as transnational history. 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 will provide high-quality training opportunities for PhD candidates and advanced masters students in Political History.

The institutions currently attached to APH are: Research School Political History (The Netherlands-Flanders), Sciences Po, Jyväskylä University, Luiss University Roma, King’s College London, Bielefeld University, Aarhus University. The University of Antwerp, University of Geneva, Södertörn University and European University Institute have recently joined the network. APH also supports the international group for PhD candidates in Political History.

6th International PhD Conference

The sixth annual conference of APH will be organized at Sciences Po, Paris, France from Wednesday June 20th to Friday afternoon June 22th 2018. APH invites PhD students from the participating institutions to apply to introduce their dissertation for comments from their peers and senior scholars from the member universities as well as by external commentators and keynote speakers.

Besides the panels during which PhD student will be able to introduce their papers which will be discussed by a senior researcher and another PhD, several events will take place: a lecture by Professor Jenny Andersson (Sciences Po) and two round tables. The schedule will be detailed soon.

Papers

Papers will be examined by a committee composed of professors of history from Sciences Po as for instance Claire Andrieu, Alain Chatriot, Nicolas Delalande, Mario Del Pero, Michele Di Donato, Mathieu Fulla, Gerd-Rainer Horn, Guido Panvini.

Each paper presenter should have 1–3 years experience in doctoral studies by the time of the conference. Your abstract and paper could start with a formulation of a particular scholarly point that you want to make and/or problem to which advice from the commentators and other participants is sought.

Paper proposals can focus on institutional political history, conceptual, social, cultural, of gender or anthropological in a national, transnational, compared or connected perspective. The concerned periods will mostly be the XVIIIth, XIXth, XXth and XXIst centuries, with no geographical boundaries. Yet, one or two sessions will specifically focus on political parties, institutions, States and political behaviors. Paper proposals on these topics will be carefully examined.

Deadline

The deadline for applications including an abstract of 250–500 words, university affiliation and an explanation of the relation of the paper to the PhD project is 12 March 2018 (extended). The applications will be sent by e-mail to aph2018paris@gmail.com. The acceptance of the proposed papers will be confirmed by the first days of March 2018.

Practical information

An accepted paper of no more than 6,000 words must then be submitted to the conference organizers by 3 June 2018 at the latest. The paper will be made available to the other participants during the following week on a closed website. Kindly include in your paper a brief introduction for those who may be unfamiliar with the period, country, organization or theme of study. The oral presentation of the papers during the conference must not exceed 10 minutes, the rest of the time being reserved for comments and general discussion.

Membership

Paper presenters should be PhD students in the APH member universities. As a way to expand the network we invite doctoral students from universities that are not yet members of the APH to also propose papers. The final acceptance of the paper then depends on the student’s home institution agreeing to pay the annual institutional membership fee of the APH (currently EUR 300) which provides an entrance to the conferences for both the senior academic staff and PhD students. Consult the head of your department on the readiness of your home institution to participate before submitting your proposal. If you are interested in an individual membership instead, contact APH coordinator Margit van der Steen (margit.van.der.steen@huygens.knaw.nl) for further information.

Costs

The participating institutions will have to cover the travel and accommodation costs of their doctoral students but we aim at providing all meals and social programme. There will be no registration fee for this conference.