The Global City, Past and Present is a new AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) International Research Network that aims to foster a better understanding of the early modern imperial city and its place in the long history of globalization. Its goal is to create a unique forum that can bring together scholars working on the widest possible variety of imperial cities and scholars of the 20th and 21st-century global city and associated processes of globalization. With the help of international participants, from a wide variety of fields of study, the network will advance our understanding of the relationship of historic cities to the modern global city.
Beginning this year, the network activities will include three thematic workshops: 1) Space, 2) Political Economy, and 3) Peoples. A final workshop will be dedicated to summarizing the main findings of the network and prepare selected essays for publication in an edited volume.
The first workshop is scheduled for May 14-15, 2015, and will be held at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. The second workshop is scheduled for November 9-10, 2015, at the Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The deadline to submit paper proposals for the second workshop is March 30.
Workshop 2 “Political Economy
The Global Cities AHRC International Research Network invites proposals from scholars of all humanities and social sciences for its workshop on the topic of “Political Economy” in cities – colonial, imperial, or other – of the early modern or modern and contemporary period.
The interplay between international power and finance and the micro geographies and politics of the global city has been an important topic of study among sociologists and urban historians in the past decades. Likewise, historians of the colonial and imperial city have focused on the dynamic between envoys of imperial authority and economy and local economic agents. The organizers of this workshop wish to encourage a stimulating exchange between scholars of the global city and those of early modern and modern world cities. By exploring intersections in both scholarships we aim to produce an improved understanding of the effect the interaction between such local and global political and economic forces had on the trajectory of urban settings across time and space and within global processes.
Applicants should email a 500-750 word proposal and a one-page CV to Mariana Dantas at dantas@ohio.edu by March 30th, 2015. Submissions must reflect unpublished work that has potential for inclusion in the volume of essays that will be edited by the project’s organizers. Selected participants will be asked to submit a paper of up to 8,000 words by September 1, 2015. Discussion at the workshop will be organized around these pre-circulated papers.
The event will be conducted in English and all proposal and paper submissions must be in English. Confirmed participants include Maria Fernanda Bicalho (History, Universidade Federal Fluminense) Hilary Jones (African History, Florida International University), Peter Taylor (Geography,Northumbria University). The network has funds to support travel and accommodation costs, especially for early career scholars.