International conference 
Political history today: exploring new themes
23-24 June 2022, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

 

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.

In this conference, we invite you 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? 

Another aim of the conference is 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 studies of the World Wars, the Cold War, the Sixties, Seventies, and the rise of neoliberalism from the 1980s onwards. 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. Equally relevant are the new histories of democracy, freedom, and parliamentarianism, which have certainly helped us understand, and maybe even overcome, the challenges of populism and authoritarian leadership. A relevant question is therefore also the question what 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. 

These  reflections will be triggered by three internationally reputed speakers and related roundtables, new themes will be staged in eight panels as well as in side events. 

 

Conference organizers

Marijke van Faassen, Ido de Haan, Carla Hoetink, Jacco Pekelder (chair), Margit van der Steen (coordination) and Henk te Velde

 

The conference is organized by the Netherlands Research School Political History and the Association for Political History.