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Conferences and Events

The WHW will be hosting a number of seminar days and workshops in the coming academic year. If you have suggestions for future projects, or are interested in presenting your work, please contact the workshop organisers. In previous years workshop members have organised several major conferences at Cambridge.

Upcoming Events:

For additional information on History Faculty conferences, past and present, please see this page

THE ROOTS OF GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY
FROM THE RISE OF THE PRESS TO THE FALL OF THE WALL

Thursday, October 1st - Saturday October 3rd, 2009

Winstanley Lecture Hall
Trinity College
Cambridge University

The concept of global civil society has gained currency in recent years among social scientists and public policy practitioners. However, it is often seen as a contemporary phenomenon -- a by-product of the wellspring of popular sentiment leading to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, or of the increasingly integrated global system emerging in its wake.

Yet, the roots of global civil society -- like those of globalisation itself -- may be traced far further back. Ordinary citizens and subjects have long pursued social and political aims through organisations which spanned states and empires and crossed borders, and were often explicitly ecumenical in purpose. From Buenos Aires to Beirut, Paris to Penang, growing numbers of civil society institutions -- cultural clubs, philosophical and learned societies, charitable organisations and reformist leagues -- emerged throughout the nineteenth century. Their members increasingly thought globally, using the printing press and the telegraph to exchange ideas, and to put their claims before the world. By the early 1900s, women's rights activists and socialists, anarchists and Marxists, radical nationalists and religious revivalists had all created movements which ran across, and sometimes undercut, borders. Indeed, the twentieth century witnessed not only successive reforms to international society, but also the growing prominence of organisations which sought to mobilise citizens for a global purpose -- from the peace leagues of the 1920s and 1930s to the anti-globalisation movements of the 1990s.

Can we locate the roots of 'global civil society' in such events? How did historical actors understand the ecumenical dimensions of their activities at various locations and points in time? How were these notions articulated in their writings and pronouncements? And how were they embodied in the associations they created, and the friendships and alliances they contracted? How might we, in turn, define and use the concept of 'global civil society'?

This two and a half day conference, organised by the World History graduate workshop, brings together both senior and junior scholars working across a broad range of time periods and geographical areas to explore the idea of 'global society' from a variety of perspectives in an attempt to find common ground. By examining historical lineages of global civil society, the conference seeks a critical understanding of the ideals of a deeply entangled global community and the possibilities of a cosmopolitan world. There will be a keynote address from Akira Iriye from Harvard University, former president of the American Historical Association and author of Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World (2002). Senior scholars responding to panels include, from Cambridge: C.A. Bayly, Megan Vaughan, Tim Harper, Shruti Kapila, Amira Bennison, and George Joffe, as well as J.P. Daughton from Stanford University. The delegate rate for the two-and-a-half day conference is £20 for non-students and £15 for students (this includes lunch on days 2 and 3 and a drinks reception).

To register, please email: camworldhistory@gmail.com and indicate your status as a student or non-student. To ensure your place in the conference please send a cheque by September 20th made payable to the University of Cambridge with a payment slip indicating "Global Civil Society Conference" and the name of the delegate to: Laura Cousens, Faculty of History, West Road, Cambridge CB3 9EF. Kindly let Laura know if you require an invoice or receipt. To attend the conference dinner at Magdalene College on Friday 2 October, please add an additional £20 to the delegate rate and state any dietary preferences.

The full programme of the event is available here.
The conference poster is available here

Organising Committee:
Su Lin Lewis
Anne-Isabelle Richard
Andrew Arsan

We are grateful for the generous support of the Faculty of History, the Trevelyan Fund, the Centre for History and Economics, the World History Seminar, Gonville and Caius College, St. Catherine's College, Magdalene College and Trinity College.

Past Conference Programmes:
 

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