Call for Papers
International Conference of Historical Geographers
Warsaw, July 15-20, 2018
Historical Geographies of International Conferences
Session convenors: Michael Heffernan, Jake Hodder and Stephen Legg (University of Nottingham)
Although the birth of the modern international conference is commonly dated to the Congress of Westphalia (1648), from the mid-19th century conferences became a permanent feature of international life as a host of new spaces emerged which supplemented and supplanted traditional geographies of diplomacy and foreign relations. These included the large, set-piece events involving politicians and diplomats – such as the Congresses of Vienna (1815), Paris (1856), Berlin (1878), and the Conference of Berlin (1884-85) – but also meetings of scientists, technicians, missionaries, experts, campaigners, intellectuals and activists who sought to respond to the challenges and possibilities of an increasingly interconnected world: how to manage telecommunications; how to map moral regulation on to international trade; how to spread the faith, the word, and the practice of one belief (over another); how to have a shared measure of time and or space across this globe; and how to produce disciplines sophisticated enough to comprehend this new world? These conferences often negotiated the political landscape of their time without being explicitly political themselves. In the 20th century the frequency, scale and scope of international conferences have expanded considerably, shaped by new international imperatives associated with peace, decolonisation, environmentalism, and by the emergence of formal, organising bodies such as the League of Nations, the British Commonwealth and the United Nations that codified the practices and procedures of international conferences.
This session addresses both conferences themselves (their topics and subject matter, their institutions), and the wider geographies and infrastructures on which they depended. How were towns, cities, and regions materially transformed by the increasing intensity and scale of conference events? How were they shaped by the venues, hotels, bars, clubs, and salons in which they were enacted? How were they influenced by the workforce of translators, organisers, printers, map makers, and tour operators who depended on them? We welcome papers across all of these themes including studies of individual conferences from any period and place, whether political or technical, religious or secular, academic or business oriented; as well as those which explore the development of conferencing as an industry or practice more broadly.
Please send titles and abstracts of up to 200 words to [log in to unmask] by 25th September 2017.
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