Call for Proposals – International conference Political history today: exploring new themes

International conference Political history today: exploring new themes

23-24 June 2022, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Call for proposals for panels on new and urgent 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

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 today’s, and tomorrow’s, crucial societal debates. The conference will stage these new themes in eight panels.

Call for Panels

We invite proposals for panels that discuss new and urgent themes in the history of the political. These can be either proposals for a single panel of two hours (3-4 panelists), or a pair of interconnected panels (6-8 panelists). Each panel has a chair and a commentator.

Proposals for sessions contain:

• description of the topic, main puzzle, and its relevance for the study of political history (maximum 500 words);
• a list of proposed panelists (preferably a mix of junior (graduate, PhD) and more advanced scholars), a short biographical note on each of them, and a brief description of their papers;
• the name of both the chair and the commentator and their affiliation.

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 March 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.