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Workshop Political History PhD Network | Florence, 2019 | Call for Papers

Identities and Politics throughout History

5th Workshop for PhD Candidates in Political History (second session)
17-18 October 2019, European University Institute, Florence, Italy

Application Deadline: 30 June 2019 (extended deadline)

Call for Papers

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.

Workshop Political History PhD Network | Jyväskylä, 2019 | Call for Papers

Political in Political History – Meaning and Understanding of Politics

5th Workshop for PhD Candidates in Political History (First Session)
17–19 June 2019, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Application Deadline: 15 February 2019

CAll for Papers

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.

Zachris Haaparinne, MA, MSSc, PhD Student (zachris.e.haaparinne@student.jyu.fi)
Juho Saksholm, MA, PhD Student (juho.m.saksholm@student.jyu.fi)
Joonas Tammela, MA, PhD Student (joonas.s.tammela@jyu.fi)

jyvaskyla3

International PhD Conference | 2019 | Call for Papers

Graduate Student Call for Papers | 5-7th June 2019, London, UK

‘History in Light of Brexit’

The Association of Political History, King’s Contemporary British History, The Strand Group, The History of Parliament Trust

Keynote Speaker: Rt. Hon. Ed Balls

There have been, and will be, numerous conferences about the causes and consequences of Britain’s departure from the European Union. This conference is not one of them. Rather, we want to think about history in light of Brexit. Indeed, to ask what does Brexit mean for the recent political history of Europe and Britain?

We are seeking abstracts from graduate students. Some participants may choose to address the issue by directly talking about the relationship between Britain and the European Union, others may adopt more tangential approaches. We welcome all takes on the question.

Some may want, for example, to talk about British notions of exceptionality and how far back those notions can be traced. Is British history best understood as an ‘island story’ set apart from that of other nations?

Perhaps even more importantly, participants who specialize in the history of continental Europe are invited to ask whether there is a specifically European political identity. One odd feature of recent discussion of British exceptionalism has been the absence of attention to any European model from which Britain is held to diverge and the lack of recognition that European countries might have their own senses of national peculiarity.

Approaches

We should stress that there is no expectation that all papers will be about purely British or European history. Historians of other parts of the world may well see links between their works have with Brexit. To take two obvious examples, scholars of Chinese history may have things to say about notions of national peculiarity; scholars of India may well feel that there are things to say about notions of federations and indeed that such notions may have had a considerable influence of how the British conceive their role in international bodies.

What does Brexit mean for the relationship between academic history and the outside world? Does our historical research need to speak more clearly to present-day political concerns?

Another approach might be to review classic works on national identity and nationalism, asking how we might revisit the arguments of, say, Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, Linda Colley’s Britons, Eugene Weber’s Peasants into Frenchman or Alan Milward’s The European Rescue of the Nation State considering Britain’s departure from the European Union and rise of populism across the continent.

None of these ideas are more than suggestions. It should be stressed, though, that we are looking for something slightly different from a typical conference paper. Participants are not to be required to address particular themes but rather invited to talk about their own research in the light of broader reflections about the political history of Britain and Europe. This is, of course, quite daunting, but the conference should be seen as an opportunity for graduate students to be intellectually ambitious and as way for them to get to grips with the broader historiographical significance of their research. If any graduate students have any questions about submitting an abstract, please contact Tom Kelsey (historyinlightofbrexit@gmail.com).

Papers

We will be using pre-circulated papers. At the conference itself, presentations will be limited to 10 minutes. The purpose of these talks is to summarise the big arguments being put forward. After these presentations, panels of three speakers will receive in depth feedback on their pre-circulated up to 6,000-word papers from an academic in the Association of Political History Network. This will be followed by a broader conversation with the conference audience.

Application

It should be stressed that only PhD candidates from universities participating in the Association of Political History can apply. Proposals should be no longer than 250 words for individual papers, and 1,000 words for three-person panels. They should be sent to historyinlightofbrexit@gmail.com by 15 February 2019. The abstract should be submitted as a Word document and include: 1) the title of the presentation; 2) institutional affiliation; 3) your email address. Applicants will be informed of the outcome the week beginning 4 March 2019.

An accepted paper of no more than 6,000 words must then be submitted to the conference organizers by 13 May 2019 at the latest. The paper will be made available to the other participants during the following week on a closed website.

Costs

There will be no registration fee for this conference and we will at least partially subsidise accommodation and travel for participating doctoral students.

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.