World History

Seminar or event series

The World History seminar is one of the oldest regular research seminars in the Cambridge history array, having its origins in the `Commonwealth and Overseas History Seminar'. The seminar was retitled `World History' in 2006 in recognition of changing intellectual interests and political contexts.

Our scope is very broad but begins from a commitment to places, ideas and people in the global South. In recent years we have featured contributions from around the globe with a particular focus on Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Oceania and the Caribbean. Post-graduates and World History faculty constitute the largest portion of our cohort, in particular students pursuing the MPhil in World History.

A student-led workshop often runs before the Thursday seminar. Drinks after, and the occasional meal out, means that the seminar is a congenial and lively place to meet up and exchange a range of ideas and information. A list of recent seminar-givers can be found in the Archive Downloads below.

Events

Jan
18

From Ilm al-bahr to Oceanography: Reading Scientific Practice in the Indian Ocean 1890-1925

Tamara Fernando (Stony Brook University, New York)
Feb
1

Navigating Empires and Chasing Papers: Cross-border Mobility in Central Asia, 1865-1916

Malika Zehni (Past and Present Fellow, London)
Feb
8

An Atlantic Micro-History of Inequality: Immigration, Race, and Real Estate in Nineteenth-Century Buenos Aires

Michael Goebel (Freie Universität, Berlin)
Feb
15

Bloke Modisane in Tanzania: Cold War Politics, TANU, and the Abortive Search for East Africa’s Anti-Colonial History, 1963-1966

Siyabonga Njica (Smuts Research Fellow, Cambridge)
Feb
29

"Captured at Sea”: Piracy, Prize and the Circulation of Art in Early-Modern Europe.

Rebecca Earle (Warwick University)
Mar
7

A roundtable marking the visit of Lucy Riall (EUI), ‘What is Eurocentricism now?’,

with contributions from Riall, Chris Clark and Sujit Sivasundaram, chaired by Fernanda Gallo.
This seminar is jointly convened with the Modern European History Seminar.
Mar
14

Capitalism and Empire: Europe's Hinterlands and its Oceanic Empires.

Richard Drayton (KCL),