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2020 Wonder Women & Rebel Girls: Women Warriors in the Media, 18th-21st Centuries
4 September 2020

Call for Papers

The explosive popularity of recent films such as Wonder Woman (2017) and initiatives like Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls (2016; 2018) reflects a growing appetite in today’s media for depictions of women on the front lines. At the same time, the waging of war off-screen continues to test the limits of policies of gender equality, with women’s admission to combat positions in the military only granted in the last few years in many countries and opposition to it remaining widespread. This online workshop aims to explore the complex interaction between media representation and reality in women’s war experience, from the early 18th century to the present day.

Proposals for papers should be sent to (opens in a new window)wonderwomenworkshop@gmail.com by 5 June 2020, containing a 300-word abstract and a short biographical note.

This workshop is convened by the UCD Centre for War Studies and will take place online on Dublin local time (GMT+1). Papers will be pre-recorded with the support of a video editor, and shared online after the event.

This event is made possible by funding from the Irish Research Council and the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP), and is organised in collaboration with the War Through Other Stuff society.

Click here for the full Call for Papers

18 – 19 May 2020

Why fight? Ideology and politics in militaries and paramilitary organisations, 1916-2001

 

2 soldiers looking at a map with tank behind

Call for Papers

War was ubiquitous in the short 20th century. From the great theatres of the World Wars to the smaller in scale conflicts of decolonisation and the Cold War, military clashes between state and non-state actors played a central role in shaping the world’s recent past and present. Beyond the obvious geopolitical implications, the wars of the past century left a lasting imprint on the politics and cultures of the populations they involved. These non-directly military aspects and consequences of warfare have been the subject of much historical research in recent years, leading to a fruitful cross-fertilisation of military history with social, cultural and political historical approaches.

Scholars interested in presenting a paper at the conference are invited to submit an abstract of 300 words accompanied by a short biographical note to: (opens in a new window)whyfight2020@gmail.com

The deadline for submissions is 30 January 2020.

The conference is convened by the UCD Centre for War Studies and will be held at the premises of the National University of Ireland in Dublin.

It is organised as part of a Marie Skłodowska Curie Action.

Click here for the full the Call for Papers.

 

2019

 Humanitarianism and the Greater War, 1912 – 1923

5 – 6 September 2019

The CWS is pleased to host a 2-day international conference on humanitarianism in the era of the Great War, 1912-1923. The conference aims to appraise the impact of the First World War on the making of ‘modern’ humanitarianism but also to assess how humanitarian concerns can alter our understand of the First World War.

5 – 6 September 2019 at NovaUCD

Papers will broadly deal with the following themes:

  • the role of individuals and organizations in humanitarian work
  • the global dimension of suffering and efforts to ameliorate it
  • the emergence of humanitarian norms, organizational forms, and practices, and (where applicable) their long-term impact
  • the place of humanitarian concerns in home front mobilizations and demobilizations
  • the actions and agency of relief beneficiaries
  • ruptures and continuities between the war and the post-war period
  • the relationship between humanitarianism and international politics

Humanitarianism and the Greater War, 1912–1923

The conference is funded by the Irish Research Council

 

 

Dancing around belligerency: Spanish-German Relations during World War II

15-17 June

Keynote speaker: Aristotle Kallis. Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Lancaster University.

World War II has had an everlasting effect on recent history, on how we understand Europe, and what we consider necessary to build stable democratic societies. The Spanish case is a great example of how the war had a serious impact not only over primary contenders but non-belligerent nations. The conference will explore the dynamics established between Spain and Germany in the midst of World War II, contributing to a better understanding of the political, economic, cultural and military history of the conflict. It will be an opportunity to internationalize discussion on the topic, as recent conferences and edited books on the subject have rarely included the work of scholars written from an international vantage point, favouring a narrow perspective only concerned with national history. By bringing together experts with very different backgrounds, the conference will provide an opportunity to place the question of German-Spanish relations within the broader context of the history of World War II and conflict in general.

This conference is funded by the Journal of Contemporary History, the Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, UCD Seed Funding, and UCD College of Arts and Humanities.

Venues:

Wednesday 15th June: Screening of (opens in a new window)The Basque Swastika at the (opens in a new window)Cervantes Institute Dublin. Screening courtesy of Esrec Productions.

Thursday 16th and Friday 17th June: Humanities Institute (University College Dublin).

Click here to download the Dancing around belligerency Final program

 

 

Post-War Transitions in Europe: Politics, States and Veterans (1918-1923)

28-30 March

black and white photo of a soldier

The CWS is pleased to host a 2-day international conference to commemorate the end of the centenary of the First World War. The conference aims to appraise how European WWI ex-service men and officers contributed to the creation of new states in Europe and participated through associative or political activism to the peace process.

28 - 30 March 2019

Papers will broadly deal with the following themes:

  • WWI ex-service men and transnational networks in Europe
  • WWI ex-service men and the peace process
  • WWI ex-service men and politics
  • WWI ex-servicemen and paramilitary violence in Europe
  • WWI ex-service men and the creation of nation states throughout Europe

Click here to see the full Programme - March 2019.

This conference is entirely funded by the Irish Research Council.

 

2015

Globalising the History of Revolutions

23-24 October

Please find below details of the conference: Globalising the History of Revolutions.

This event is being hosted by UCD's Centre for War Studies and is funded by an IRC New Foundations Award and UCD's Decade of Centenaries Award.

Keynote Speakers:

Professor John Horne, Trinity College Dublin and Professor Stephen Smith, Oxford University

Few historians will remain unaware that at its beginning and at its end, the long 19th century was defined by eras of revolutionary change. And yet, while historical debates about the nature of the late 18th century ‘Atlantic Revolution’ predate the emergence of global history and continue to provide it with one of its formative subjects; the same cannot be said of the series of revolutions that occurred during the first two and half decades of the 20th century. With few exceptions, even today, historians of revolutions and revolutionary situations in this epoch work using national or imperial frameworks that remain in isolation from each other.

We are especially interested in receiving proposals from historians working on a diverse range of cases including those of Russia (1904-07), Ottoman Turkey (1908), Iran (1905-08), Portugal (1910), Mexico (1910-1920); China (1911-1913); and Ireland (1916-1923); as well as the wave of revolutions and revolutionary situations that swept away the European land-Empires and challenged the legitimacy of European colonial rule across the globe at the end of the First World War (1917/18-1923). In addition to these cases, we also welcome proposals that deal with revolutionary situations where the cocktail of factors that led to revolutions elsewhere where also present in the early 20th century but did not develop in a similar manner – such as Japan, Italy or Spain, to name just three. To promote cross-epochal comparisons, papers dealing with similar themes in other eras, including those of the eighteenth century world are particularly welcome.

Click here for the full Global Rev CfP and please send all paper abstracts to Mark Jones at (opens in a new window)mark.jones@ucd.ie.

 

 

How the United States Ends Wars

23-24 October

Please find below details of a conference on the topic: How the United States Ends Wars.

This event is being co-organized by the Clinton Institute for American Studies at University College Dublin and the School of History, University College Cork, with assistance from the UCD Centre for War Studies.

Keynote Speakers:

Gideon Rose, Editor and Peter G. Peterson Chair, Foreign Affairs

Marilyn Young, Professor of History and Collegiate Professor at New York University

Robert Brigham, Shirley Ecker Boskey Professor of History and International Relations at Vassar College

As the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War approaches, and the United States struggles to extricate itself from Afghanistan and Iraq, students of military history have, not surprisingly, begun to analyze how the United States ends conflicts. Most of this literature examines the factors that shape the decision-making processes of policymakers as wars draw to a close. Missing from the scholarship, however, is consideration of an equally important set of questions. What impact did the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan have upon American culture? What did these wars leave behind? In other words, how did it impact the society and local cultures? What implications did these wars have for long-term U.S. strategic goals? This conference will achieve two purposes: Firstly, it will link culture and strategy in discussing the ending of wars by the U.S. Secondly, it will consider the long-term consequences of recent wars fought by the United States.

Paper proposals on the following topics are welcome:

1)    The Vietnam War

2)    Military involvement in Iraq, 1990 to the present

3)    War in Afghanistan, 2001 to the present

4)    The effect of these wars on local populations

5)    The cultural consequences for the United States of these wars

6)    The cultural and strategic costs of war in the early 21st century

7)    War and grand strategy in U.S. foreign policy

Please send all proposals to John (Jack) Thompson at (opens in a new window)john.thompson@ucd.ie

This event is being co-organized by the Clinton Institute for American Studies at University College Dublin and the School of History, University College Cork, with assistance from the UCD Centre for War Studies. (opens in a new window)http://www.ucdclinton.ie/HowtheUnitedStatesEndsWars

 

 

Workshop: Political Thought and War in 20th Century Europe

25 September

This international workshop brings together scholars of modern European history specializing in the history of European political thought and war studies in order to examine the ways the two World Wars changed the perception and conceptualization of politics and the political sphere in Europe. The workshop will focus on immediate reactions to war, and the two periods discussed are “post-1918” and “post-1945”. Some of the themes examined are the foundational principles of the state, nations and nationalism, democracy, justice, and humanity.

East Central Europe is the focal point of the conversation, as the changes there were most dramatic. The research team of the ERC-funded ‘Negotiating Modernity: History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe’ project will introduce some of its findings on the topic giving the Irish audience a unique chance to discuss this little known area of modern European history.

The workshop is made possible by the New Foundations Grant of the Irish Research Council.

Click here for the full ‌PT and W Programme.

 

 

Conference: Universities in Revolution and State Formation

5-6 June

As part of the Decade of Commemorations, University College Dublin is hosting a two-day international conference, Universities in Revolution and State Formation at UCD Newman House on 5 and 6 June 2015.

Building on Ireland’s current centennial interest in the revolutionary decade (1913-23), this conference will transcend the confines of chronology and geography to explore the role that universities play in revolution and state formation. This approach encourages multi- and interdisciplinary perspectives. Papers are invited from across the humanities, human sciences, and beyond.

For further information please contact Dr Conor Mulvagh, School of History and Archives, UCD ((opens in a new window)conor.mulvagh@ucd.ie). Click here for the URSF Conference Programme‌.

This event is funded by the Irish Research Council's New Foundations & UCD's Seed Funding Programme: Decade of Centenaries Internal Award Scheme 2014.

 

 

Memories and Identities in Central and Eastern Europe

8-9 May

The Irish Association for Russian, Central and East European Studies (IARCEES) will host‌ their 39th Annual Conference in May 2015 in Trinity College Dublin.

The conference is organized by the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies, the Center for European Studies, the Trinity Long Room Hub, and the Irish Association for Russian, Central and East European Studies and will be centered on the theme of ‘memory’ and ‘identity’.

For further information please contact Dr Balázs Apor at (opens in a new window)aporb@tcd.ie.

Click here for the full IARCEES Call for Papers (PDF).

 

Workshop: Peace in a Time of War, 1899-1928

7 May

Thursday 7 May 2015 - 2.00 PM – 5.15 PM

Venue: K114, Newman Building, University College Dublin

The proposed workshop examines how the experiences and cultures of war constituted new ideas, forms, and institutions of peace. While war studies and peace studies are often conceived as separate, even opposed fields, this project seeks to integrate them, to show how war and peace, through experience, imagination, and conduct, were interwoven. The workshop concentrates on the period between two emblematic moments in the history of peace, the Hague Conference of 1899 and the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, in which the signatories renounced war as an instrument of policy. This dynamic between war and peace occurred in different ways:

Project Participants: Gearoid Barry (NUI Galway), Carl Bouchard (Montreal), Jean-Michel Guieu (Paris I), Frank Reichherzer (Potsdam), Peter Jackson (Glasgow), and William Mulligan (UCD).

We wish that you confirm your attendance by emailing (opens in a new window)Suzanne.darcy@ucd.ie by 1 May 2015.

2014

Emergent Nations: Australia and Ireland in the First World War

17 October

On 17 October 2014, The Keith Cameron Chair of Australian History at UCD presents A Symposium on Emergent Nations: Australia and Ireland in the First World War.

Speakers will include:Prof Keith Jeffery: Ireland, Gallipoli and the commemoration of the Great War, Prof David Fitzpatrick: Irish, Australians, and Irish Australians in the Great War: some statistics, Prof Carl Bridge: The failure of the idea to form a lasting imperial cabinet & federation, c. 1917-21, Prof Jeff Kildea: Shirkers and Sinn Feiners: the Australian Irish and the First World War, Dr Conor Mulvagh: Commemoration in stone: Ireland, the Celtic Fringe and Australia considered; and Dr Jennifer Wellington: Displaying the nation: WW1 exhibitions in Britain & Australia, 1917-1925‌.

The conference will take place in Room K117, Newman Building, School of History & Archives. Click here for the Symposium Programme.

For catering purposes please advise by 15 October if you will be attending the symposium by emailing (opens in a new window)jeff.kildea@ucd.ie.

Also, at 8:30 AM on 17 October, Mr Charles Flanagan, TD, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Dr Ruth Adler, Australian Ambassador to Ireland will launch the Irish Anzacs Database. The event at UCD will occur simultaneously via video link with a launch event at UNSW. For more information on this click here Irish Anzacs Database.

 

History as Sociology, Sociology as History

27 August

On 27 August 2014, the School of Sociology, University College Dublin, will host a one-day conference on the theme of ‘History as Sociology, Sociology as History’.

Participants include Peter Burke (Cambridge), Michael Mann (UCLA), Dennis Smith (Loughborough) and – to be confirmed – Maria Lúcia Pallares Burke (Cambridge), as well as Stephen Mennell, Siniša Malesevi?, Steve Loyal, Robert Gerwarth and Andreas Hess of UCD. Click here to see the Conference Programme.

The conference will take place in Q012 in the Quinn School of Business.

There is no conference fee but registration is essential. To register, please email (opens in a new window)oskar.milik@ucdconnect.ie.

 

The Academic World in the Era of the Great War

14-16 August

A conference organised by Dr. Tomas Irish (TCD) and Dr. Marie-Eve Chagnon (Université de Montréal) with the support of the Centre for War Studies, the Trinity Long Room Hub, the TCD Department of History, and the Cultures, Academic Values and Education Research Centre (CAVE).

The Great War could neither have been fought nor won without scientific knowledge. Academic expertise in various fields, from history and law to chemistry and medicine, proved crucial to its prosecution. New links were forged with government that would alter forever the ways in which universities functioned and their relationship with the state. As communities, universities were at the heart of the societal and cultural mobilization for the war (through the activities of their staff, the roles played by students and alumni and the use of university facilities for hospitals, public meetings and war-time education). In some cases they sheltered opposition to the war. Academics and universities also played an important role in defining the meaning of the war and refashioned the very notion of international communities of scholarship in order to take account of the polarization produced by the conflict. In this, they foreshadowed the political engagement of learning that would become a marked feature of the ‘short twentieth century.’ For all these reasons, the war cast a long shadow over attempts to return to some kind of ‘normality’ once the conflict was over.

The Academic World in the Era of the Great War is a major international conference that will address these issues in a comparative, inter-disciplinary, and transnational manner.

Registration: €50.

Attendance at the conference dinner will cost an additional €40 (places limited).

To register, please email (opens in a new window)academicworldconference@gmail.com no later than 1 August 2014. The AWC Programme can be found here.

 

Himmler’s Supranational Militia: Indigenous Participation in SS- and Police Units during the Second World War

28-30 May

The existing literature on non-German volunteers in the Waffen-SS and police formations in occupied Europe is highly uneven, both in terms of quality and geographical coverage. While non-German soldiers fighting alongside the Wehrmacht have received some scholarly attention, even the more academically sound publications on the Waffen-SS of recent years have tended to prioritize a national or German-centric perspective over transnational, cultural history approaches.

Our international conference, co-organized by the University of Toru?, the University of Jena and the Centre for War Studies at University College Dublin, is generously supported by the Fritz-Thyssen-Foundation. With contributors from virtually all countries affected by collaboration, the conference will seek to address some of the gaps in the existing scholarly literature. Held in three languages (English, German, Polish, with simultaneous translations) the event will take place in Toru? from 28 to 30 May 2014.

Click here for the Conference Programme.

 

World War I in Central and Eastern Europe: Politics, Culture and Society

9-10 May

The Irish Association for Russian, Central and East European Studies (IARCEES) will host‌ their 38th Annual Conference in May 2014.

The conference is going to be centred around the theme of World War I in Central and Eastern Europe: Politics, Culture and Society.

Click here for the IARCEES Programme (PDF).

 

Navigating Neutrality: Neutral Countries and the First World War

11 April

Speakers will include: James Matthews (UCD), Javier Ponce (University of Las Palmas), Samuel Kruizinga (University of Amsterdam), Lina Sturfelt (Lund University) and Filipe DeMeneses (NUI Maynooth). Closing comments by Prof. John Horne (TCD).

Click here for the Workshop Programme . For further details please email (opens in a new window)James Matthews.

Time: 2:00pm - 7:00pm

Venue: Room F104 - UCD, Newman Building

2013
 

The Great War and the Wider World

26 August

A joint workshop organized by the University of São Paulo and University College Dublin's Centre for War Studies.

Click here to download the Workshop Program.

23 August

A joint workshop organized by the "Dr Emilio Ravignani" History Institute, CONICET-University of Buenos Aires and University College Dublin's Centre for War Studies.

Click here to download the Workshop Program.

2012
 

The Greater War: Imperial Mobilization, Demobilization, and Unrest in the Era of the Fist World War

18-19 May

This conference took a global approach to the First World War and its often violent aftermath. It highlighted the mobilization of empires which played a crucial role in allowing the imperial powers to conduct a total war. The consequences of these mobilizational processes had a profound impact on the subsequent transition of these empires from war to a sometimes unstable peace.

Click here for the  Conference Program (PDF). 

2011
 

The Wars before the War, 1911-14

25-26 Nov

The purpose of this conference is to examine the military history, broadly defined, of the period between the Second Moroccan Crisis in 1911 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. These years witnessed what might appropriately be termed the ‘wars before the war’.

The conference was generously supported by the Embassy of Turkey in Dublin.

Click here for the Conference Program (PDF).

 

2010
 

Demobilizing Empires: The Transition from War to ‘Peace’ after the Great War

10-11 Sept

This symposium sought to provide a global perspective on the often violent (and sometimes peaceful) paths of transition from war to ‘peace’ in the years following the First World War in both the formal and informal territories of the ‘blue-water’ imperial powers.

In this exploratory workshop we brought together scholars to examine the seeds of decolonization and patterns of demobilization and remobilization in the empires of Britain, France and the Netherlands in the aftermath of the First World War. Through comparative discussion and debate organized in themed subject panels, this workshop contributed towards a transnational understanding of the origins, nature and consequences of war imperialism, anti-colonial resistance, religious and communal unrest, and imperial policing and paramilitary violence in the extra European world.

Click here for the Conference Program (PDF).

 

Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War, 1917-1923

28-29 May

Joint UCD/TCD conference

Trinity College Dublin

  • Friday, 28 May 2010: Trinity College Dublin, HIST Room, College Historical Society, Graduates Memorial Building, 1st Floor.
  • Saturday, 29 May 2010: Trinity College Dublin, Institute for International Integration Studies (IIIS), Seminar Room, Arts Building, 6th Floor

Click here for the Conference Program (PDF).

2009
 

The Defeat of the Central Powers: Experiences and Legacies of 1918

7-8 Nov

In the autumn of 1918, after four years of fighting, Germany sued for peace. The failure of the spring 1918 offensive, the declining morale of the army, the fracturing of national cohesion, and the collapse of its allies, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire brought home to the military and political leadership that the war had been lost. On 11 November an armistice ended the fighting on the western front, the decisive theatre of the conflict. The conference explored the experiences and legacies of defeat in the vanquished states of Europe.

Click here for the Conference Program (PDF).

 

Veteran Internationalism and the Cultures of Victory and Peace (1919-1933)

23-24 Oct

The Great War created a new social group throughout Europe: ex-servicemen. Whilst the associations and ideas that linked this group suggest a transnational phenomenon, thus far veterans have been primarily examined in a national framework. The aim of this workshop was to consider ex-servicemen at an international and transnational level, especially by focusing on the former Allied powers. Through a study of ‘cultures of victory’ throughout Europe, the workshop considered the emergence of an inter-Allied veteran internationalism embodied i.e. by the Fédération Interalliée des Anciens Combattants (FIDAC). The ‘cultures of victory’ were then partly transformed by a process of cultural demobilization into one of attempted reconciliation and peace, in which it established an uncertain and contested juncture with ex-servicemen’s organizations from the defeated powers. This process is embodied by the Conférence Internationale des Associations de Mutilés et Anciens Combattants (CIAMAC), which became the unofficial ex-servicemen’s organization of the League of Nations. By exploring the attitudes of ‘victorious’ inter-Allied veterans to ‘defeated’ veterans of the Central Powers, the workshop also considered the scope and limits of internationalism in the post-war decade, with particular reference to the former Allied countries in Eastern and Western Europe.

Click here for the Conference Program (PDF).

2008
 

Paramilitary violence after the Great War

5-6 Dec

This conference looked at paramilitary violence after the Great War from a global perspective. The end of the Great War did not immediately bring peace to Europe. On the contrary, revolutions, counter-revolutions, ethnic strife, pogroms, wars of independence, civil conflict, and inter-state violence continued from 1917 to 1923 as the seismic forces unleashed by cataclysm of the Great War transformed the political landscape of much of the old continent. One or more of these kinds of violence affected Russia, the Ukraine, Finland, the Baltic states, Poland, Austria, Hungary, Germany, Italy, Anatolia, and the Caucasus. Indeed, Ireland also experienced a war of independence and civil war in the same period.

Click here for the Conference Program (PDF).

 

UCD Centre for War Studies

School of History and Archives,, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.
T: +353 1 716 8608