Past Events
Call for Papers: "Precarious Racial Superiority: Imperial Prestige and Deviance in colonial Asia, ca. 1800-1940", due 20 June 2023.
This workshop will take place on 1-2 February 2024 at Villa Hatt (ETH Zürich) in Zürich, Switzerland. For individual paper proposals, please submit a title, 250-word abstract, and a short CV (max. 1 page) to Denise Lim () by 20 June 2023. Confirmation of acceptance of papers will be sent by end July 2023.
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Call for Papers: “Spaces of Social Policies: Achievements and Prospects of Historical Research Perspectives” Conference, Liechtenstein Institute, Gamprin-Bendern, Liechtenstein, October 12 – 14, 2023.
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Conference: "Decolonizing Natural Histories: Critical and practical perspectives in museum contexts" Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle Neuchâtel, 15-17 March 2023
Organized in the context of Agora grant of the Swiss Science National Foundation to the research project of Dr. Tomás Bartoletti.
Abstract: While decolonization has been the subject of much recent discussion in both ethnological and archaeological collections, it has largely been absent from natural history contexts. In addressing this topic in a natural history museum, this three-day conference will examine the circumstances under which non-European collections have found their way into European natural history museums and develop practical tools for both collections management and public mediation that represent and include the participation of a diversity of voices and experiences.
Specifically, speakers from different Latin American and European countries will develop a critical reflection on decolonial thought and practices, including the identification of key issues in a natural history context. Participatory workshops and other activities will also aim to create a space for meaningful exchange among participants to lay the groundwork for future collaborations and to develop critical toolkits for natural history museums and museum professionals interested in engaging in decolonial practices.
More information: external pagehttps://naming-natures.ch/
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Conference: "Decolonizing Curricula, Pluralizing Teaching and Research"
It is our pleasure to announce the international conference “Decolonizing Curricula, Pluralizing Teaching and Research”, taking place at ETH Zurich from February 2-4 2023. The conference aims to provide a platform for an urgently needed debate on how universities can make use of postcolonial insights and perspectives to face the challenges of teaching and researching in the 21st century and become more open and diverse institutions, operating in a spirit of historical awareness, equality and cosmopolitanism. Scholars and experts from around the world and local Swiss researchers, activists, curators and politicians will share their experience and knowledge and exchange opinions about the appropriate steps to take.
Registration:
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Research Colloquium
Joint ETHZ-UZH Research Colloquium in Global and Extra-European History
Final session: Thursday, 1 December 2022, 18:15-19:45 CET
Venue: RZ F21 (ETH Zurich), Clausiusstrasse 59, 8092 Zurich
In our last session of the joint ETHZ-UZH Research Colloquium in Global and Extra-European History we will have the honour to welcome Dr. Saima Nasar from the University of Bristol who will prent her ongoing research on "Managing Minorities: Creating the Ugandan Asian Refugee".
Dr. Nasar is a lecturer in the History of Africa and its Diasporas at the University of Bristol working on the histories of race, empire and immigration. Her research is committed to multi-archival and interdisciplinary perspectives, whereas her previous and future work contributes to developing comparative and interdisciplinary approaches in the fields of migration and imperial studies. Dr. Nasar's first book examines the transnational trajectories of Britain’s East African Asian population. She has also worked on the history of trauma in relation to post-war Irish diasporic communities. Her future research focuses on welfare and Black British activism.
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Session 4
Thursday, 3 November 2022, 18:15-19:45 CET
Venue: RZ F21 (ETH Zurich), Clausiusstrasse 59, 8092 Zurich
The fourth session of the joint ETHZ-UZH Research Colloquium in Global and Extra-European History on 3 November. Dr. Julian Strube from the University of Vienna will give a talk on "The Global History of Modern Tantra".
Julian Strube is Assistant Professor in Religious Studies at the University of Vienna. He works from a global historical perspective about the relationship between religion and politics, as well as debates about the meaning of religion, science, and philosophy since the eighteenth century. He recently completed a DFG-funded postdoc project about "Tantra within the Context of a Global Religious History of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," which focuses on the exchanges between Bengali and Western intellectuals in colonial Bengal. In march 2022, his monograph, Global Tantra: Religion, Science, and Nationalism in Colonial Modernity, was published with Oxford University Press.
Session 3
Thursday, 27 October 2022, 18:15-19:45 CET
Venue: RZ F21 (ETH Zurich), Clausiusstrasse 59, 8092 Zurich
The third session of this semester's joint ETHZ-UZH Research Colloquium in Global and Extra-European History is taking place on 27 October 2022. Dr. Mònica Ginés-Blasi will present her project with the title "Beyond the 'Coolie Trade': Interconnected Networks of Human Trafficking in Treaty-Port China (1830-1910)".
Dr. Ginés-Blasi is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies. Her current research project focuses on the interconnections between three distinct yet linked forms of coerced labour and forced relocation in China: the trafficking of indentured labourers, children and women to Latin America and Southeast Asia. The project studies the trafficking of women and children alongside the coolie trade from the earliest indications of international female trafficking in the 1830s, to the abolitionist ordinances issued in various Southeast Asian colonies in the 1930s. It particularly focuses on the role of intermediaries such as Chinese local authorities, Western consulates and consular officials in China, immigration agents, companies, brokers, ship owners, and captains in the south China coast and overseas, as well as on the international political strategies which the nations involved implemented through diplomacy and legislation. It aims at illuminating the complex transnational networks operating human trafficking in China and beyond, and how they determined the international circulation of Chinese migrants in an integrative perspective. It will particularly address the specific alignments which formed these networks, how these agencies coordinated, operated, became entangled or collided, and how they bridged and activated connections between these three types of human trafficking.
Session 2
Thursday, 13 October 2022, 18:15-19:45 CET
Venue: RZ F21 (ETH Zurich), Clausiusstrasse 59, 8092 Zurich
The second session of this semester's joint ETHZ-UZH Research Colloquium in Global and Extra-European History is taking place on 13 October 2022. Dr. Mischa Suter will present his research on "The Nature of the Ego and the Politics of Ethnopsychology in the Era of Decolonization".
Mischa Suter is a Swiss National Science Foundation Eccellenza Professirial Fellow at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. His research interests include the history of science, European social history, the history of colonialism and capitalism as well as history and social theory. His current research project focusses on the history of ethnopsychology in the second half of the 20th century.
Session 1
Thursday, 29 September 2022, 18:15-19:45 CET Venue: RZ F21 (ETH Zurich), Clausiusstrasse 59, 8092 Zurich
The first session of this semester's joint ETHZ-UZH Research Colloquium in Global and Extra-European History's will take place on Thursday, 29 September, at RZ F21 (ETH Zurich), Clausiusstrasse 59, 8092 Zurich. Dr. Ritesh Jaiswal from the University of Zurich will present his research on"Ceylon for Sinhalese": Interwar ethnonationalism and politics around Indian migrants.
Ritesh Kumar Jaiswal is a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Fellow at the University of Zurich. He will be working on his project “Repercussions of the Great Depression and World War-II in Asia” with Dr. Judith Vitale. Jaiswal was awarded his PhD from the University of Delhi, 2021. His doctoral thesis examined the non-Indentured (kangany and maistry) systems of Indian Migration to Ceylon, Malaya and Burma, 1880-1940. During his PhD he was a Fulbright-Nehru Fellow at Harvard University; Volkswagen Global History Fellow, Gottingen University and Indian Council for Social Science (ICSSR) Doctoral Fellow, Delhi. He has also been a recipient of research grants from the Charles Wallace India Trust and the Joint Centre for History and Economics, Cambridge University and Harvard University. He has widely presented and published his research in edited books and Journals of International repute. In between 2015-17 and 2021-22, he taught as an Assistant Professor at the Department of History of various colleges of University of Delhi. His research and teaching interests includes labour and migration History, Indian Ocean studies, Non-Indentured and Indentured systems of migration, British Colonialism, Modern Indian History, history of Modern Europe, and the Global history.
GMW Workshop 2022: Geographies of Exchange: "South Asia and Germanophone Europe in New Histories of Knowledge" (International Worskshop)
Organised by Josephine Selander MA, ETH Zurich, Claire Louise Blaser MA, ETH Zurich, Dr. Razak Khan, CeMIS, Göttingen University, PD Dr. Margit Franz, University of Graz, at Professorship for History of the Modern World, Room C 31, Building IFW, ETH Zurich, Haldeneggsteig 4, 8092 Zurich.
7 & 8 September 2022, ETH Zurich
DownloadKindly find the workshop programme here.
GMW Workhop 2022: Drugs and the „Industrial Situation“, 1800s–1960s
Organised by Elife Biçer-Deveci, Judith Vitale, Tomás Bartoletti, the upcoming workshop will take place at the ETH Zurich, Building LEE, Room E 101, Leonhardstrasse 21, 8092 Zürich.
22 & 23 August 2022, ETH Zurich
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'Transimperial Histories of Knowledge'
Workshop, organized by Claire Loiuse Blaser (GMW), Monique Ligtenberg (GMW), Josephine Selander (GMW) and the Center History of Knowledge Zurich (ZGW)
23/24 March 2021 (zoom)
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The United States and South Asia from the Age of Empire to Decolonisation: New Perspecitves on Indo-US Entanglements, c. 1850s-1950s
Conference organized by Sujeet George and Prof. Harald Fischer-Tiné.
22 & 23 January 2020, ETH Zurich.
Five Types of “closed country” (sakoku), and Perhaps More: Japan’s Self-Portrait within the Context of “General History”
Oeffentlicher Vortrag Prof. Dr. Fuyuko Matsukata (University of Tokyo)
10. Dezember 2018, Universität Zürich
Workshop New Approaches to Swiss Colonial & Global History
Recent research on Swiss history shows that even without colonies, the country was intensively interwoven with the imperial world of the 19th and 20th centuries. What does a Swiss history look like that adequately reflects these entanglements? And what consequences does this have for our current understanding of a 'global' Switzerland?
Workshop, 16 November 2018, ETH Zürich
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GMW Workshop 2018
Guest Commentators: Prof. Cyrus Schayegh (Graduate Institute Geneva), Dr. Adrian Ruprecht (University of Berne)
Internal PhD-Workshop, 9 November 2018, Coalmine Winterthur
An Empire of Demands and Opportunities. Relocating the Dutch Indies in European History
Workshop, ETH Zurich, LEE C 114, 27-28 August 2018
Young South Asia Scholars Meet
Workshops, 15-17 August 2018, ETH Zürich & University of Bern
Von der Kolonisierung zur Globalisierung. Weshalb wir Schweizer Geschichte neu denken sollten
Public Event, 19/20 April 2018, University of Berne
Sports for Development
The Science and Development Forum 2018 at ETH Zurich,co-organized by the Chair for history of the modern world, addresses the relation of sports and development. Sports is a global topic with multiple dimensions in the lives of individuals as well as in society.The Agenda 2030 recognises sports as a cross-cutting them of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. As part of the Forum, Prof. Fischer-Tiné will give a talk on the relation of sports and colonialism.
29 January 2018, ETH Zürich
Fringe Science and Threadbare Knowledge
Interdisciplinary Workshop, 22—23 June 2017, ETH Zürich
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GMW Workshop 2017
Guest Commentators: Proff. Margrit Pernau (Max-Planck-Institute) and Alexander Keese (University of Geneva)
Internal PhD-Workshop, 24 April 2017, Coalmine Winterthur
Mediating the Knowledge of Modernity: Global Perspectives on the ‘Secular’ Work of the YMCA (c. 1870-1970)
International Conference, 19-20 Januar 2017, ETH Zürich
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The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of the Social Gospel in Asia, c. 1890s-1930s
International Conference, 25-26 August 2016, Asia Research Institute Singapore
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Sport and Society in Transnational Contexts
International Conference, 5-6 June 2015, ETH Zürich
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GMW Workshop 2014
Guest Commentator: Prof. Dr. Martin Dusinberre (University of Heidelberg)
Internal PhD-Workshop, 31 October 2014, Coalmine Winterthur
Young South Asia Scholars Meeting
International Workshops, 21-22 July 2014, ETH Zürich
Poison, Science and the Colonial Order: India, 1830-1950
Presentation Prof. em. David Arnold, Emeritus Professor of Asian and Global History, University of Warwick
13 November 2013, ETH Zürich
GMW Workshop 2013
Guest Commentator: Prof. David Arnold (University of Warwick)
Internal PhD-Workshop, 31 October 2013, Coalmine Winterthur
Religion in the Age of Imperial Humanitarianism
International Conference, 5-7 September 2012, Academy of the Diocese Mainz
Fighting Drink, Drugs, and Venereal Diseases: Global Anti-Vice Activism, ca. 1870-1940
International Conference, 1-4 April 2012, Monte Verità
DownloadMore Information (German only) (PDF, 137 KB)
The Role of Experts in Dealing with the Past
Conference, 18-19 November 2011, Center for Global Studies, Universität Bern
DownloadProgram (German only) (PDF, 411 KB)
Traveling Penologies. Towards an entangled history of the prison and technologies of punishment
International Workshop, 2-3 December, ETH Zürich
‘Un seul monde’? Forschungskolloquium zur Geschichte der Schweizer Entwicklungszusammenarbeit
Colloquium, 28 October 2011, ETH Zürich
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The Cold War and the Postcolonial Moment: Prehistory, Aims and Achievements of the Non-alignment Movement
International Conference, 3-4 June 2011, ETH Zürich
external pageConference Proceedings
Winter-School for Doctoral Candidates
23-28 January 2011, Monte Verità
Desperate and Dangerous: Bad-Character Policing in Colonial India, 1872-1919
Presentation with Professor Prof. Dr. Radhika Singha, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
31 May 2010, ETH Zürich
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African Network in Global History
Presentation with Christine Whyte
9-11 December 2009, University llorin, Nigeria
Workshop Postcolonial Schwitzerland
7 November 2009, ETH Zürich
ZGW Kolloquium
Presentation with Prof. Dr. Kapil Raj (Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris)
13 May 2009, ETH Zürich
Inaugural Lecture Prof. Dr. Harald Fischer-Tiné
27 Feburary 2009, ETH Zürich
Jahaji Music: India in the Caribbean (Surabhi Sharma, India, 2007)
World Music: Documentary by and featuring independent, Indian film maker DownloadSurabhi Sharma (PDF, 126 KB)
11 November 2008, ETH Zürich
Workshop 'Transimperial Histories of Knowledge'
It is our pleasure to invite you to the workshop 'Transimperial Histories of Knowledge', organized by Claire Loiuse Blaser (GMW), Monique Ligtenberg (GMW), Josephine Selander (GMW) and the Center History of Knowledge Zurich (ZGW), on March 23/24 (zoom).
The workshop presents ongoing research for a special issue of the global history journal Comparativ. The issue brings transimperial history into conversation with the history of knowledge. It does so in order to investigate the co-production of knowledge between Africa, South and Southeast Asia and countries situated ›at the margins‹ of Imperial Europe during the eigtheenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Together, the contributions present new paths to understanding how imperialism, when viewed through the prism of a transimperial history of knowledge, emerged as a shared European project, co-constituted by extra-European environments, epistemologies and actors.
The discussion will be based on pre-circulated papers which participants are expected to read in preparation of the workshop.
We kindly ask participants to register by March 15, 2021, via email to: