Venue: German Historical Institute London

Organized in co-operation with Birkbeck and SOAS and co-funded by the CHASE Consortium of the Humanities and the Arts in South East England

This workshop, held at the German Historical Institute, London, brings together scholars across the disciplines of international, global and imperial history as well as literary theory and international relations to develop new approaches that consider women’s contribution to ‘thinking the global’.

Although the history of international relations as a discipline is currently booming, much of the emerging research sidelines the contribution of women, often because of their historical marginalisation from both international institutions and academia. Yet women found a host of alternative settings in which to think about global politics and problems. We aim to move beyond the history of organisations and networks in order to investigate the languages that women used to contribute to the theorising of the international, ranging from the problem of war to the building of an international community. More specifically, our focus is on branches of the social sciences that are less evident as pathways to conceptualisations of the global, such as education, social work and management.

Through this workshop we aim to begin a conversation about the nature and languages of international political thought in the twentieth century. The workshop is structured around three main themes: ‘Approaches’, ‘Women Thinkers’ and ‘Languages of the Global’. We will discuss individual case studies as well as a pre-circulated reading. 

Conference programme (PDF file)

Conference report (PDF file), published in: GHIL Bulletin 28 (2016), Vol 1