Academic Year 2015-16

Lingering Pasts: European Approaches to Historical Trauma.

Public and academic debates about uses of the past have been on the European agenda since the Historikerstreit in the 1980s. The fall of communism firmly placed liberal democracy, human rights and condemnation of totalitarian regimes among basic European values. The expansion of the European Union, recent conflicts in Ukraine, and the refugee crisis have called into question shared European values based on historical experiences. The lecture series explores the theme of public representations and uses of the past from historical, cultural, and political perspectives. 

The following four talks will explore different ways of dealing with the past and national trauma, as well as key elements that define the European past and present: the Second World War, authoritarian rule and democracy, communism, and fascism. 

Competing Narratives or Consensual History? The politics of memory in Germany since 1989/90

Prof. Habbo Knoch (Historisches Institut, University of Cologne)

Prof. Habbo Knoch is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the Historical Institute, University of Cologne. His research focuses on the links between civility and violence in the twentieth century, collective experiences and practice of violence and the culture of remembrance in Europe after 1945. His is the author of Die Tat als Bild. Fotografien des Holocaust in der deutschen Erinnerungskultur, (Hamburg, 2001) and numerous other publications on the memory of the Holocaust. 

Time: 4:30pm

Venue: School of History, Room K114

The ghost of Franco in democratic Spain: The after life of the dictatorship

Dr Zira Box (University of Valencia, Spain)

Dr Zira Box is Assistant Professor of political science at the University of Valencia, Spain. She has been a visiting fellow at the University of California and the New School for Social Research, New York. She specialises on the symbolic construction of Franco’s regime, memory politics in Spain, and political religion. She is author of España, año cero. La construcción simbólica del franquismo (Alianza, 2010).

Time: 4:30pm

Venue: School of History, Room K114

Memory politics in post-communist Europe and its impact on the European culture of memory

Prof. Alexey Miller (European University, St. Petersburg/ Central European University, Budapest)

Prof. Alexey Miller is Professor of History at the European University in St. Petersburg, and visiting professor in History at the Central European University, Budapest. He specializes in the history of the Russian empire and nationalism, and historical politics in Eastern Europe. He is the co-editor of Nationalizing Empires (CEU Press, 2015), and The Convolutions of Historical Politics (CEU Press, 2012).

Time: 4:30pm

Venue: School of History, Room K114

Dr Simina Badica

Communism in museum spaces: Processing the past in Romania

Dr Simina Badica (Romanian Peasant Museum, Bucharest)

Dr Simina Badica is Head of Ethnological Archives at the Romanian Peasant Museum in Bucharest, where she curates exhibitions and conducts research on representations of communism in Romania. She has published extensively in the field of museum studies. She teaches museum studies at the National School for Political and Administrative Studies.

Dr Badica is also the author of “Same exhibitions, different labels? Romanian national museums and the fall of communism” in Simon J. Knell, Peter Aronsson, Arne Amundsen (eds.), National Museums. New Studies from Around the World (Routledge, 2010) and “’Forbidden Images’? Visual Memories of Romanian Communism Before and After 1989” in Maria Todorova, Augusta Dimou, and Stefan Troebst (eds.), Remembering Communism. Private and Public Recollections of Lived Experience in Southeast Europe (CEU Press, 2014). 

Time: 6:00pm

Venue: School of History, Room K114

Prof. Anthony King

The Post-Heroic General: military command in the 21st Century

Prof. Anthony King (Exeter University)

Anthony King is a Professor in Sociology based in Exeter but has just been appointed Chair in War Studies at Warwick University. His main areas of research are sport, social theory and the military. His most recent book, The Combat Soldier: infantry tactics and cohesion in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (Oxford University Press, was published in February 2013. He is currently working on a new project on the divisional headquarters (1750 to 2020). As a result of his research, he has increasingly acted as a mentor and advisor to the armed forces including a period with ISAF Regional Command South in 2009-10.

Following the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, there has been widespread criticism of military command. The armed forces have themselves recognised the issue  and are currently reforming command structures in the light of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Specifically, western armed forces, led by the United States and supported by the UK and France, are focusing on and reforming the divisional level which they have identified as decisive. They are re-investing in divisional command and reforming the division (a formation of some 20,000 soldiers) to improve future military performance. This paper aims to analyse and assess the reformation of military command at the divisional level. The paper argues that command at the divisional level has become ‘post-heroic’. Precisely because divisional operations are now so complex involving multiple functions over large tracts of space and time, divisional commanders can no longer direct or lead operations personally, as commanders like Rommel, Ridgway or Monash did - often heroically - in the twentieth century. No single individual can coordinate this intricate organization and its functions. Divisional command has been collectivized so that in place of a single commander making rapid individual decisions, command boards consisting of senior officers, who advise the commander, have emerged. Decisions have become collective and even bureaucratized; staff procedures channel and structure the commander's authority. This paper uses the example of ISAF Regional Command South in 2009-10 to explore this transformation of command.

Time: 12:00pm

Venue: Ardmore House, UCD (Opposite AIB Bank and Car Park, behind the Tierney Building)

UCD Seminar Series

A fascist warfare: new light on the Italian intervention in the Spanish Civil War

Dr Javier Rodrigo (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Dr Rodrigo receiuved his PhD in history from the European University Institute in Florence (2004) and is currenly a postdoctoral researcher at the London School of Economics and the UNED in Madrid and Associate Professor at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain).

His main research interests are civil wars and collective violence from a comparative perspective, the concentrationary systems in Europe, and Fascism. He has published several books and edited volumes. Among his primary publications are Los campos de concentración franquistas, Entre la historia y la memoria (2003) and Tierras de nadie. La Primera Guerra mundial y sus consecuencias (2014).

He is currently working on a new book, La guerra fascista. La intervención italiana en la Guerra Civil española, to be published in 2016 about Italian volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. 

Good invaders? The occupation policy of the Spanish “Blue Division” in Northwestern Russia, 1941-1944

Prof. Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)

Prof. Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas received is PhD in History from the European University Institute, Florence and is Professor of Late Modern History at the University of Santiago de Compostela. Since October 2012 he holds temporarily the Chair of Modern European History at the Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich.

His main research interests are European nationalist movements in comparative perspective; local, regional and territorial identities in Spain during the 19th and 20th centuries; cultural history of war and violence, with particular reference to the Spanish Civil War and the Russian front during the Second World War; as well as Spanish migration to Latin America, 19th and 20th centuries, with particular reference to Galician migration to Argentina, return migration before 1936 and political mobilization among migrant communities. He’s author of more than a dozen books and edited volumes, among them ¡Fuera el invasor! Nacionalismos y movilización bélica durante la guerra civil española 1936-1939 (2006) and Internacionalitzant el nacionalisme. El catalanisme polític i la qüestió de les minories nacionals a Europa (1914-1936) (2010). He’s currently working on a new book, Banderas de nieve. Historia y memoria de la División Azul, to be published in 2016 about the Blue Division.

Time: 4:30pm

Venue: School of History, Room K114

UCD Decade of Centenaries

1916 and the Great War

Prof. Jay Winter (Yale University)

Jay Winter, the Charles J. Stille Professor of History, is one of the world’s leading authorities on World War I and its impact on the 20th century. His other interests include remembrance of war in the 20th century, such as memorial and mourning sites, European population decline, the causes and institutions of war, British popular culture in the era of the Great War and the Armenian genocide of 1915. Winter is the author or co-author of a dozen books, including Rene Cassin et les droits de l’homme (Paris: Fayard), co-authored with Antoine Prost, won the prize for best book of the year at the Blois History festival in 2011; Socialism and the Challenge of War, Ideas and Politics in Britain, 1912-18, The Great War and the British People, The Fear of Population Decline, The Experience of World War I and Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History.

This paper is presented as part of (opens in a new window)UCD Decade of Centenaries, 1916 as a Global Event Lecture Series.

Time: Thursday 21 January at 4:30pm

Venue: Royal Irish Academy

Hall of Honour Memorial

Trinity College will unveil an inscribed memorial outside the Hall of Honour commemorating the staff and students of Trinity College Dublin who fought and died in the First World War.

In 1928 the Hall of Honour, which acts as the entrance to the 1937 Reading Room, was officially inaugurated. It was built to house the Roll of Honour, the (opens in a new window)names of Trinity staff, students and alumni who lost their lives in the First World War. On 26 September this year a specially-commissioned memorial stone was be unveiled on the plinth in front of the building to commemorate those whose names are inscribed within.

Time: 11:00am

Date: Saturday 26 September

Venue: Front Square

TCD Seminar

Hall of Honour Memorial

Trinity College will unveil an inscribed memorial outside the Hall of Honour commemorating the staff and students of Trinity College Dublin who fought and died in the First World War.

In 1928 the Hall of Honour, which acts as the entrance to the 1937 Reading Room, was officially inaugurated. It was built to house the Roll of Honour, the (opens in a new window)names of Trinity staff, students and alumni who lost their lives in the First World War. On 26 September this year a specially-commissioned memorial stone was be unveiled on the plinth in front of the building to commemorate those whose names are inscribed within.

Time: 11:00am

Date: Saturday 26 September

Venue: Front Square

 From Conscripts to Conquerors: Napoleon's Grande Armée and the Making of a Masterpiece

Prof. Michael Broers (University of Oxford)

Professor Broers' major research interests are in Italian and French history in the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly the Napoleonic period. He is interested in the application of theories of cultural imperialism to European contexts in the Revolutionary-Napoleonic period, and in the relationship of regionalism and popular Catholicism to modern state-building.

Professor Broers was Leverhulme Research Fellow for academic years 2011-2013.

Time: 7:30pm

Venue: Synge Theatre, Arts Building

Carnival and Ruin: Looting and Destruction in Easter 1916

Finatan O'Toole (The Irish Times)

Fintan O'Toole is a columnist, literary editor, and drama critic for The Irish Times. He has written for the paper since 1988. O'Toole was drama critic for the New York Daily News from 1997 to 2001 and is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. He is an author, literary critic, historical writer, and political commentator, with generally left-wing views. His recent books have focused on the rise, fall and aftermath of Ireland's ‘Celtic Tiger’. He has been a strong critic of political corruption in Ireland throughout his career. In 2012 and 2013, O'Toole was a Visiting Lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton University and contributed to the Fund for Irish Studies Series. 

This paper is presented as part of (opens in a new window)UCD Decade of Centenaries, 1916 as a Global Event Lecture Series.

Time: Thursday 8 October at 4:30pm

Venue: Newman House

Fading echo of a distant drum? The Easter Rising in Australian history and memory

Prof. Mark Finnane (ARC Laureate Fellow and Professor of History, Griffith University)

Mark Finnane studied Irish History with Patrick O’Farrell (UNSW) and as a graduate student with Oliver MacDonagh (ANU). His doctoral research on mental illness is the foundation for his later work on the history of policing, punishment and criminal justice. His first book was Insanity and the Insane in Post-Famine Ireland (1981) and his most recent (with Heather Douglas)  Indigenous Crime and Settler Law: White Sovereignty after Empire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), a study of the criminal law’s response to Aboriginal crimes of violence over the last two centuries. Since 2013 he has directed the Prosecution Project, Griffith Criminology Institute, with the support of an ARC Laureate Fellowship (2013-18) to research the history of the criminal trial in Australia.

This paper is presented as part of (opens in a new window)UCD Decade of Centenaries, 1916 as a Global Event Lecture Series.

Time: Tuesday 28 October at 4:30pm

Venue: Royal Irish Academy

TCD Bilateral Seminar

Trophies, Loot, Relics or Souvenirs? Military Cultures of Acquisition in the Egyptian Sudan 1881-1898

Dr Paul Fox (University of York)

Dr Fox's research is focussed on the relationship between the conduct of armed conflict and its mediation in visual culture in modern Europe. It spans the construction of national and gendered identities, witnessing and testimony, censorship, protest, trauma, and commemoration. I have also co-authored a programme preparing military cultural specialists for operational duties in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Conquerors and Collectors: French Soldiers' Spoils of War in Italy and Egypt, 1796-1801

Dr Fergus Robson (Trinity College)

Dr Robson’s research interests include the French Revolution, counter-revolution, national identity, state-building, policing and rural society and the making of ‘modernity’. He uses a broad interdisciplinary approach including methods and theories from across the social sciences. Fergus received his doctorate from Trinity College Dublin in 2013 and his graduate studies were funded by a three year scholarship from the Irish Research Council.

He is currently undertaking a two-year post-doctoral research fellowship on the HERA funded project, Making War, Mapping Europe: Militarized Cultural Encounters, 1792-1920. He has delivered research papers at seminars and international conferences in Ireland, the UK and the US.

Time: 4:00pm

Venue: TRIARC seminar room

UCD Decade of Centenaries

An Easter Rising in an Eastern Colony

Prof. Partha Chatterjee (Columbia University)

Partha Chatterjee is one of India’s most eminent political theorists and historians. He studied at Presidency College in Calcutta, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. He divides his time between Columbia University and the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, where he was the Director from 1997 to 2007. He is the author of more than twenty books, monographs and edited volumes and is a founding member of the Subaltern Studies Collective. He as awarded the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize for 2009 for outstanding achievements in the field of Asian studies. His books include: The Politics of the Governed: Considerations on Political Society in Most of the World (2004); A Princely Impostor? The Strange and Universal History of the Kumar of Bhawal (2002) and A Possible India: Essays in Political Criticism (1997).

This paper is presented as part of (opens in a new window)UCD Decade of Centenaries, 1916 as a Global Event Lecture Series.

Time: Thursday 5 November at 4:30pm

Venue: Royal Irish Academy

CANCELLED: UCD Decade of Centenaries

CANCELLED: The Other 1916 Risings

Prof. Keith Jeffery (Queen's University Belfast)

Keith Jeffery was educated in Ireland, the USA and Cambridge (St John’s College), where he won the Prince Consort Prize and Seeley Medal. He is Professor of Modern History at Queen’s University Belfast. From 1988 to 1997 he was joint-editor of Irish Historical Studies, and is currently chair of the journal’s board of directors. In 1997–98 he was a visiting fellow at the Australian National University and the Australian Defence Force Academy, University of New South Wales. His research interests encompass a wide range of topics in Irish, British, and British imperial history. A particular emphasis has been on Ireland and the First World War, which was the subject of his Lees Knowles Lectures.

This paper is presented as part of (opens in a new window)UCD Decade of Centenaries, 1916 as a Global Event Lecture Series.

Time: Thursday 19 November at 4:30pm

Venue: Newman House

UCD Decade of Centenaries

"Unbalanced Emotionalism” or republican romance: the 1916 Rising in South African eyes

Prof. Bill Nasson (Stellenbosch)

Bill Nasson is Professor of History at Stellenbosch University. He obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge. He worked at UCT from 1982 until 2009 and before joining Stellenbosch was the King George V Professor of History at UCT. In 2011 he was the Leverhulme Visiting Professor in History at the University of Kent. He is a former editor of the Journal of African History and co-editor of The Cambridge History of South Africa, Vol.2 (2011). He serves on the editorial board of the International Encyclopaedia of the First World War. In 2011 he won the Recht Malan Prize for Best Non-Fiction for The War in South Africa: The Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902.

This paper is presented as part of (opens in a new window)UCD Decade of Centenaries, 1916 as a Global Event Lecture Series.

Time: Thursday 26 November at 4:30pm

Venue: Newman House

TCD Seminar

France's Last Crusade? Louis XIV and the Ottoman Empire

Dr Phil McCluskey (University of Hull)

Dr mccluskey's interest lie in European relations with the Ottoman World in the 17th and 18th centuries, with an emphasis on Franco-Ottoman relations. This seminar is jointly organised with the Centre for Early Modern History.

Time: 4:00pm

Venue: Neill Lecture Theatre in the Trinity Long Room Hub

TCD Bilateral Seminar

Imagining Reconstruction in Western Europe during and after the First World War

Dr Pierre Purseigle (University of Warwick)

Dr  Purseigle just completed the first phase of a Marie Curie Fellowship at Yale University, where he also taught the comparative history of the First World War. He will be resuming this fellowship in May 2015 at Trinity College Dublin. 

His research to date has focused on the comparative history of the First World War and especially on the experience of the French, British, and – to a lesser extent – Belgian populations. I have researched and published on wartime mobilization, the experience of refugees, and pictorial humour. I am currently writing on the process of nationalization and political mobilization in Britain and France in the early Twentieth Century, on the historiography of the First World War, on the reconstruction and demobilization of belligerent societies after the conflict, and on the memory of the Great War in the French Empire. My new research projects will investigate the reconstruction of Europe after WWI and the transformations of the belligerent state in the era of the Great War. My teaching and editorial undertakings have similarly been driven by a strong commitment to the comparative study of European societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Imagining Reconstruction in Western Europe during and after the First World War

Dr Alex Dowdall (Trinity College Dublin)

Dr Dowdall completed his PhD in History at Trinity College Dublin in October 2014. His research examines the direct effects of the First World War on civilian populations. His PhD thesis, entitled ‘Under Fire: Civilians at the Western Front, 1914-1918’, is a socio-cultural history of the French civilian communities living under fire at the front. It charts the local dynamics of national mobilisations, the effects of the war on local communities, as well as the consequences of the extension of military violence to civilian populations.

At the College of Europe Alex will continue his research into the effects of the First World War on Europe’s civilian populations. In particular, he will focus on the history of forced displacement and refugees in France and Europe during the First World War. He will also work towards producing his first monograph.

Time: 4:00pm

Venue: TRIARC seminar room