Event archive
Below is an overview of notable lecture series, international conferences and seminars held at the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology:
Research seminars open to Birkbeck research students and staff only.
- Tuesday 9 November 2010- Gender and History, Professor Sonya Rose. Room: CLORE MANAGEMENT BUILDING 102, 6-8pm
- Tuesday 23 November 2010- Emotions in History, Dr Paul White. Room: Malet Street 539, 6-8 pm
- Tuesday 7 December 2010- Space and History: a masterclass, Dr Leif Jerram. Room: CLORE MANAGEMENT BUILDING 102, 6-8pm
- Tuesday 18 January 2011- The use of oral History, Dr Sue Onslow. Room: MAL 538, Malet Street Building 6-8pm
- Monday 7 February 2011- Women and sexuality: lived experiences, Professor Cornelie Usborne. Room: CLORE MANAGEMENT BUILDING G102, 6-8pm
- Tuesday 22 February 2011- Trying to understand medieval society, Susan Reynolds. CLORE MANAGEMENT BUILDING 102, 6-8pm
- Tuesday 22 March 2011- Literature and History, Dr Santanu Das. Room: CLORE MANAGEMENT BUILDING 102, 6-8pm
Thursday 24 February – 6 pm. Thesis-Writing Workshop with Caroline Goodson and Maria Margaronis. One writing sample will be precirculated, and it is to be read and edited before the Workshop. For information, please contact c.goodson@bbk.ac.uk Room: 120, 43 Gordon Sq.
Tuesday 22 February – 5:10-5:50 pm. Research Student Workshop: Isabel Paintin, ‘Sailing to Tyre: Herodotus, the Hippocratics and Opsis in the fifth century BC’ (supervised by Christy Constantakopoulou), Chair: Ariane Magny, Room: Malet Street, B35.
Tuesday 22 February - 6-8pm, Trying to understand medieval society, Susan Reynolds. Clore Building, Room 102, part of the Research Students' Seminars. Wine will be served afterwards.
Monday 21 Febuary – 6 pm. Professor Jerry White, ‘Vengeance and the Crowd in Eighteenth-Century London’. Part of the lecture series: ‘Becoming Human’. In this lecture Jerry White focuses on the eighteenth century crowd as an agent of popular justice in opposition to the institutions of a corrupted rule of law. And he explores how, at its worst, that same crowd could be as savage and merciless as the system it sought to oppose. To book a place, see this webpage http://www.bbk.ac.uk/sshp/news/spring-lectures
Wednesday 16 February - 7:00 pm Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism - 'In Pursuit of the Nazi Mind: Rudolf Hess and his Doctors 1941-1946, Room: Malet Street, 414
Tuesday 15 February – 5:10-5:50 pm. Research Student Workshop: Abigail Baker, ‘The Elgin Marbles: buying into a political ideal’ (supervised by Caspar Meyer), Chair: Christy Constantakopoulou, Room: Malet Street, B35.
Monday 14 February – 6:30 pm. Theory Reading Group. Room: Malet Street 351
Thursday 10 February – 6 pm. Thesis-Writing Workshop with Caroline Goodson and Maria Margaronis. One writing sample will be precirculated, and it is to be read and edited before the Workshop. For information, please contact c.goodson@bbk.ac.uk. Room: B 02, 43 Gordon Sq.
Tuesday 8 February – 5:10-5:50 pm. Research Student Workshop: Susan Gane, ‘The story of John Railton, a common soldier in c.1730-50, who tried to get his officers cashiered’ (supervised by Jerry White), Chair: Laura Stewart, Room: Malet Street, B35.Monday 7 February - 6-8pm, Women and sexuality: lived experiences, Professor Cornelie Usborne. Room: Clore Management Centre, Room GO2, part of the Research Students' Seminars
Tuesday 1 February – 5:10-5:50 pm. Research Student Workshop: Onur Önol, ‘Imperial Russia and the Armenians: The Making of the Tsarist Policy (1907-1914)’ (supervised by Orlando Figes), Chair: Ludivine Broch, Room: Malet Street, B35.
Tuesday 1st February - 6-8pm. The use of oral History, Dr Sue Onslow. 43 Gordon Square, GOR G04. Part of the Research Students' Seminars. Wine will be served afterwards.
Summer Term 2011:
Monday 9th May 2011, 7:30 pm. What Next? Life after the PhD.... What can you do with a PhD? The doctorate is not often discussed as a vocational qualification, and it is often assumed to be a training only for a university post. This informal workshop session will explore ways of using the arts & humanities PhD in your career development: we'll be joined by several PhD graduates - including a writer, a museum director and a postdoctoral researcher - who have taken different directions following their PhDs. After some short presentations, we'll discuss ways of describing your research and transferable skills, and what to do next with the PhD thesis itself. The workshop is aimed at upgraded students coming towards towards the end of their research, but all Birkbeck and Bloomsbury Colleges PhD students welcome. Wine will be served, no registration necessary. Monday May 9th, 7:30pm, Clore G01, contact Anthony Bale (a.bale@bbk.ac.uk) or Caroline Goodson (c.goodson@bbk.ac.uk) if you have any questions.
Wednesday 11th May 2011. Research Student Workshop Room 253 Malet Street, 6-7pm
James Perkins, ‘British Liberals and the Balkans from the Bulgarian Horrors to the New Europe’ (supervised by David Feldman)
Chair: Christian Goeschel
Thrusday 12th May 2011, 6:30pm, Room B34, Main Birkbeck building, State of the European Union, Keynote Address - Etienne Balibar- register here
Friday 13th May 2011, 10:00am - 6:00pm, Room B04, 43 Gordon Square, State of the European Union, Conference - register here
Monday 16th May at 6pm, Keynes Library Room 114. Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Academia (But were Afraid to Ask)
What's a professor? What hours do academics work? What actually is a postdoc? What's the difference between a Research Fellow, a Teaching Fellow and a Junior Lecturer? If you've ever had the feeling that all of your peers know more than you about academic life, or had a question which you couldn't ask because it seemed too basic, or too brazen, then this session will provide an amnesty for you to get these things off your chest. Wine and juice will be served to put you at ease while Dr Anthony Bale (English & Humanities) and Dr Caroline Goodson (History, Classics and Archaeology) attempt to answer these and any other questions you might have about academia. The session is aimed at students looking for an academic career after their PhDs, but all Birkbeck and Bloomsbury Colleges PhD students welcome. No registration necessary.
www.dandelionnetwork.org
Thursday 19th May 2011, 6:30pm, Room B34, Main Birkbeck building, Jodi Dean - The Communist Horizon, public lecture, open to all, no registration
Thursday 19th May – 6 pm. Thesis-Writing Workshop with Caroline Goodson and Maria Margaronis. One writing sample will be precirculated, and it is to be read and edited before the Workshop. For information, please contact c.goodson@bbk.ac.uk Room: Malet Street 351.
Saturday 21st May, 1-6 pm. Birkbeck Institute for Humanities. Rhetorics of Pain: Historical Reflections . Pain is one of the most influential forces in history. An examination of its many transformations over time provides unique insights into everyday life. This workshop seeks to explore the complex phenomenon of pain from the eighteenth century to the 1960s. Speakers: Chair: Professor Joanna Bourke (Birkbeck) Dr Lucy Bending (Reading) Dr Ana Carden-Coyne (Manchester) Dr Jeremy Davies (Cambridge) Professor Sander Gilman (Emory) Professor Javier Moscoso Sarabia (Universidad de Murcia) Room B04, Birkbeck Main Building Free - register here . For more information on this, please visit http://www.bbk.ac.uk/bih/
Monday 23rd May, 6:30-8:30pm Masterclass on Race with Professor Sander Gilman, part of the Theory Reading Group. Room: Malet Street 352.
Monday 23rd May, 6.00-7.25pm Professor Ranjan Ghosh (North Bengali University): ‘Contesting Tagore Today’; Respondent: Professor Chandak Sengoopta, G02, 43 Gordon Sq. Ranjan Ghosh teaches in the Department of English, University of North. Currently, he is Visiting Prof at the Peter Szondi Institute of Comparative Literature,Frei University, Berlin. With over fifty papers in prominent journals across the academy (Oxford Literary Review, History and Theory, Parallax, Rethinking History, SubStance, Comparative Drama, etc.) Among his many books include (In)fusion Approach: Theory, Contestation, Limits (Rowman Littlefield, 2006), Edward Said, the literary, social and political world (Routledge, 2009), Lover’s Quarrel with the Past (Berghahn Books, 2011). Ghosh is currently guest editing a special number entitled ‘Tagore Today’ for the Journal of South Asian Studies (Routledge). This presentation will focus on Rabindranath Tagore’s idea of ‘Visva Bharati’: his ideas about an institution, a university.
Tuesday 24th May, 6-9 pm Inaugural lecture: 'Death in Florence. Plague, Public Health and the Poor in Early Modern Italy' Professor John Henderson. Room: B34/B02, Malet Street Reception to follow.
Tuesday 24th May, Room 401 Research Student Workshop (30 Russell Square), 6-7pm.
Elena Zanoni (visiting student from the Universita di Verona), “To Entertain and Instruct’: Antonio Stoppani and the popularisation of science in Italy in the second half of the nineteenth century’.
Chair: Sean Brady
Wednesday 25th May, 7-9 pm. Body and the Book. This session will consider bodies and books in examples which press them into close relation. Three speakers will consider books from different historical moments, asking about the intersections between the skin and the page, ink and blood in the textual and visual imagination. This session emerges and continues some of the threads from last year's Arts Week 'Book Technologies' session and will be of interest to those concerned with the materiality of the book in history, the intersection of text and image and the representation of the body in history. Speakers: Luisa Cale, Birkbeck, University of London. Luisa has published extensively on the visual culture and literature of the Romantic period. (http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/our-staff/full-time-academic-staff/cale). Isabel Davis, Birkbeck, University of London. Isabel has an expertise in late medieval literature and culture. (http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/our-staff/full-time-academic-staff/davis) Sarah Lightman, University of Glasgow. Sarah is an artist and curator, and is also working on a PhD, Autobiography and Comics. (http://sarahlightman.com/) Keynes Room, 43 Gordon SQ
Thursday 26th May 2-3.30pm 'Archaeological Objects and their People'. Brief presentations and a Round Table discussion by Birkbeck staff about the finds and materials of their research, including prehistoric worked flints, ancient coins, and medieval pottery from an Italian monastery. Through hands-on study, analysis of archaeological context, and comparison with other sites, we will use discussion to explore fundamental questions of the relationship between the past and its objects. This will also provide a taster session of Birkbeck's archaeology courses.
Thursday 26th May 630 pm: Birkbeck Institute for Humanities. Room B35. Birkbeck Main Building Talking Books - Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain This event will revolve around Stefan Collini's book Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain. For this event, four younger scholars from various disciplines will reflect on the significance of the book and its bearing on their own work. In conversation with the author they will move beyond the immediate reception of the book and consider its subject-matter in a series of longer perspectives. Free and open to all - register here. Speakers to include: Stefan Collini (Cambridge), Matthew Beaumont (English, UCL), Joel Isaac (History QMUL) . For more information on this, please visit http://www.bbk.ac.uk/bih/
Thursday 26th May 6-7:25 pm Professor Jonathan Steinberg (Pennsylvania University), 'Bismarck, Anti-Semitism and the Tragedy of German Jewry'. Lecture for the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism and the Wiener Library in the lecture series: ‘Making Histories: Archives, Artefacts and Interpreting Past’. This lecture focuses on the infamous 'Jew Debate' of November 1880 in the Prussian Parliament - the first time the unified Germany declared that Jews were not real Germans. It was accompanied by street incidents which the Jewish banker Bleichröder described as, “the beginning of a terrible social revolution.” Bismarck watched it happen with satisfaction - it would smash the smart Jewish leadership of the parliamentary Liberal party. Room 532, Malet Street.
Saturday 28th May all day: Angles 3 an Interdisciplinary Postgraduate conference on Cultural History: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/angles/
Wednesday 1 June, 6 pm, Malet Street Building, B30. ‘Black Baudelaires.’ Dr. Vivian Bickford-Smith. This paper is drawn from a book-in-progress on Cities and Identities in Twentieth-Century South Africa. The book is particularly concerned with perceptions of South Africa’s three leading cities (Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town), or parts of those cities, and the consequences of those perceptions such as attachments to particular places that underpinned ethnic, racial and nationalist identities. This paper focuses on perceptions of urban life in writing by black Johannesburg writers between the 1940s and 1960s. The argument is that much of what they wrote was a conscious or subconscious reaction to what might be described as the Bitter Cry of Outcast Johannesburg conveyed in the likes of Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country or Michael Scott’s film Civilization on Trial in South Africa that justified central government destruction of ‘slums’. The writing of people like Peter Abrahams, Bloke Modisane, Ezekiel Mphahlele, Can Themba and Todd Matshikiza suggested, as did Baudelaire’s prose poems about nineteenth century Paris, that there were many creative responses amidst urban misery. And the poet of Parisian life and Johannesburg’s Black Baudelaires often dealt with similar themes: the glory of intoxication, the individual and the crowd, the proximity of respectability and un-respectability, ambivalence towards both, fascination with “low-life”, and questioning what it meant to be human in the city. So the intention of the paper is to explore and attempt to explain (in terms for instance of urban and authorial contexts) some of the Baudelairian themes in mid-twentieth century black South African writing. (Chair: Allison Carrol)
Thursday 9th June 1pm - 5pm This workshop aims to bring together historians of all regions for a truly global history workshop. Organised crime has existed in almost every developed society since at least the beginning of the modern period, and yet many questions about it have been largely neglected by historians. Typically, organised crime exists in societies where the state is unable to implement its “monopoly of violence”. How do we define what constitutes organised crime in the past, who was involved in it, and why? How does organised crime’s emergence and persistence relate to cultural, political, and economic factors? How does organised crime relate to class, ethnicity and gender, and how did it (and attempts to control it) develop in different national and transnational contexts? Finally, how does one write a history of organised crime, given the often fragmentary evidence that throws up a number of epistemological issues? Speakers will include Professor John Dickie (University College London), author of the bestselling Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia (2004) and Blood Brotherhoods: The Rise of the Italian Mafias (2011). Room G01 Clore Management Centre, Birkbeck College, Free – open to all - register here
Thursday 9th June How to Write the History of Organised Crime
1:30-5pm G01 Clore Centre, Birkbeck College
A Birkbeck Institute of the Humanities workshop
Organised by Christian Goeschel, Julia Laite and Hilary Sapire (Birkbeck)
Social scientists and lawyers have long been studying organised crime, networks of criminal activity. Historians on the other hand have only begun recently to examine organised crime. Most existing histories of organised crime focus on organised crime’s functions, but say little about the cultural contexts in which organised crime operates. Moreover, existing accounts tend to focus on particular national contexts.
Organised crime, a phenomenon prevalent throughout the world, has always transcended national boundaries and is therefore a theme that allows us to pursue transnational history on a global level. The workshop aims to bring together historians of all regions for a truly global history workshop. Organised crime has existed in almost every developed society since at least the beginning of the modern period, and yet many questions about it have been largely neglected by historians. Typically, organised crime exists in societies where the state is unable to implement its “monopoly of violence”. How do we define what constitutes organised crime in the past, who was involved in it, and why? How does organised crime’s emergence and persistence relate to cultural, political, and economic factors? How does organised crime relate to class, ethnicity and gender, and how did it (and attempts to control it) develop in different national and transnational contexts? Finally, how does one write a history of organised crime, given the often fragmentary evidence that throws up a number of epistemological issues?
Please register on http://www.bbk.ac.uk/bih/news/orgcrime
January 2011
Tuesday 25 January – 5:10-5:50 pm. Research Student Workshop: Hazel Croft, ‘The Making of the 'No Neurosis Myth': psychiatric diagnostics and civilian mental health on the eve of the Second World War’ (supervised by Joanna Bourke), Chair: Alison Carrol, Room: Malet Street, B35.
Tuesday 25 January – 18.30-19.45 pm. Lecture: The Fate of the idea of Toleration, Simon Schama, University Professor of Art History and History, Columbia University, Location: Kennedy Lecture Theatre, UCL Institue of child health, 30 Guilford Street, London WC1N 1EH. Lecture co-sponsored with the Anne Frank trust. Payment and booking required. For details: http://www.annefrank.org.uk/
Tuesday 18 January – 5:10-5:50 pm. Research Student Workshop: Clare Roche, ‘Mountainous influences: Victorian women climbers 1850-1900’ (supervised by Daniel Pick), Chair: Julia Laite, Room: Malet Street, B35.
Thursday 13 January – 6 pm. Thesis-Writing Workshop with Caroline Goodson and Maria Margaronis. One writing sample will be precirculated, and it is to be read and edited before the Workshop. For information, please contact c.goodson@bbk.ac.uk Room: Clore Building, G02
Tuesday 11 January – 5:10-5:50 pm. Research Student Workshop: Giselle Glasman, ‘Images of the sea in Greek Tragedy’ (supervised by Christy Constantakopoulou), Chair: Ariane Magny. Room: Malet Street, B35.
Monday 10 January – 6:30 pm. Theory Reading Group. Room: Malet Street, 254.
2010:
15-16 December 2010: Masculinity and Political Leadership in Europe Workshop
7 December. RESEARCH STUDENTS’ SEMINAR: Space and History: a masterclass, Dr Leif Jerram. Room: CLORE Building 102, 6-8pm
6 December, 6:30pm. THEORY READING GROUP FOR RESEARCH STUDENTS Council Room, Malet St. 1/ Norbert Elias, 'Homo clausus and the civilising process' in Paul du Gay et al (eds.) Identity: A Reader, (London: Sage, 2000), pp. 284 - 296. Download here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11497626/Norbert%20Elias%20Homo%20Clausus_0001.pdf 2/ Pierre Bourdieu, 'The biographical illusion' in Paul du Gay et al (eds.) Identity: A Reader (London: Sage, 2000), pp. 297 - 303. Download here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11497626/Bourdieu%20The%20Biographical%20Illusion.pdf
23 November RESEARCH STUDENTS’ SEMINAR: Emotions in History, Dr Paul White. Room: Malet Street 539, 6-8 pm.
9 November - RESEARCH STUDENTS’ SEMINAR: Gender and History, Professor Sonya Rose. Room: CLORE MANAGEMENT BUILDING 102, 6-8pm
4 November, 6:00pm. Why Humanities? One day conference + Keynote address by Professor Onora O’Neill – 'The Two Cultures Fifty Years On' This conference gathers together some of the leading voices in the humanities. The purpose is to discuss the value of their disciplines in the context of university cutbacks, with a view to developing newly articulated defences of the worth of research in the humanities. The conference opens with a keynote public address given by Professor Onora O’Neill on the evening of Thursday 4th November, and continues through Friday, with contributions from speakers: Quentin Skinner (QMUL), Joanna Bourke (Birkbeck), Francis Mulhern (University of Middlesex), Raimond Gaita (King’s College London), Kate Soper (London Met), Stefan Collini (Cambridge) and Iain Pears (Historian and Writer) Onora O'Neill keynote address - Thursday 4th November 6pm Beveridge Hall, Senate House One day conference - Friday 5th November Room B34 Birkbeck Main Building
1 Nov, 6:30pm. THEORY READING GROUP FOR RESEARCH STUDENTS. Room 251, Malet St. Judith Butler, 'Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions' (extract from Gender Trouble, 1990) in Sara Salih (ed.) The Judith Butler Reader (London: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 90 - 118. Download here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11497626/Butler%20Gender%20Trouble.pdf
28 October: Birkbeck Institute for Social Research, Lunchtime Seminar - 'Home': Migration and Home in the age of Facebook - Daniel Miller What happens when Filipino children left behind by migrant parents are faced with the choice of whether to friend their mothers on Facebook? How have family relationships been transformed by what we call polymedia, that is a shift towards a slew of alternative media for transnational communication combined with a rapid reduction of cost? It might be presumed that such that parents, divided from their children, would be able to reconstitute their family and their home, now that they can be in touch twenty times a day by text or online with Skype and webcam. Research by Mirca Madianou and myself with mothers in the UK and their children in the Philippines suggest that the effects of polymedia are far more complex and contradictory than that.
At home with Shannon and Ricketts - Matt Cook The artists Charles Shannon and Charles Ricketts met at the City and Guilds Technical Art School in Kennington Park Rd, London, in 1882. They lived together in London (in Kennington, Chelsea, Richmond, and Kensington) and latterly also in a castle keep in Kent until Ricketts died some 49 years later. During this period they accumulated a vast collection of art and antiques which they displayed and stored in their various homes. In their wills they left the bulk of this collection to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge along with albums of photos in which they represent their homes in very particular ways – not as cosy retreats or havens of domestic bliss, but as treasure houses displaying their exquisite possessions and their investment in particular pasts and an aesthetic and artistic present. If home was a place of self expression but also secrecy, retreat and (if the police gained access) incrimination for some other ‘queer’ men during this period, Shannon and Ricketts sustained their coupledom and perhaps also protected it from criticism in part through what Sharon Marcus describes as ‘their intensely domestic existence’ and also their open, visible, and highly cultured rendition of home. This paper explores the multiple strands of this ‘queer’ (that is - to their contemporaries - ‘odd’) couple’s domestic investment. 12 - 2pm Room 321 Birkbeck Main Building , All welcom
21 October, 6:00-9:00 pm: Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities: Exploring Cultural History. Room F10, 28 Russell Sq. Over the past thirty years, cultural history has moved from the periphery to the centre of historical studies, profoundly influencing the way we look at all aspects of the past. In Exploring Cultural History, a remarkably international group of historians has come together to consider the rise, boundaries and possibilities of cultural history in general, and to highlight the particular role played by Peter Burke, one of the most influential historians of our time and the author of some 25 books translated into more than 30 languages. The speakers will include such distinguished experts in the field as John Arnold and Keith Thomas; Peter Burke, who is currently visiting fellow at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, will also give a response. The editors and some of the authors will be present. Wine will be served. Speakers: Professor John Arnold (Birkbeck), Professor Peter Burke (Emmanuel College, Cambridge/BIH Visiting Fellow), Professor Sir Keith Thomas (All Souls College, Oxford)
13 October: Institute of Historical Research, Day for New Research Students in History. Open to all students beginning historical research at any UK university, the day will introduce the many services and facilities offered by the Institute, including its unparalleled programme of research seminars, its publications, websites and research training courses, and its open access library. Participants will be guests of the IHR for lunch before hearing a full programme of talks showing how the Institute can help them with their work (please see http://www.history.ac.uk/events/event/1983 for details).
7 October: 7 pm. Research Students’ Induction Lecture: Dame Janet Nelson ‘What use to History is Biography?. Council Room. Prof Dame Janet (aka ‘Jinty’) Nelson’s distinguished research career has focussed on early medieval Europe, including Anglo-Saxon England and the Carolingian World. She has published widely on kingship, government and political ideas, on religion and ritual, and more recently on women and gender.She serves on the editorial board of Past and Present, on the editorial collective of History Workshop Journal, and on the advisory boards of a number of other journals. She was a co-founder of the Women’s History Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research (IHR) in 1986, and has for many years been a convenor of the IHR’s Earlier Medieval Seminar. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1996, serving as Vice President from 1999 to 2001, and a Corresponding Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America in 2000. She was President of the Royal Historical Society from 2000 to 2004. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2006 for services to History.
4 October: 6.30pm: THEORY READING GROUP FOR RESEARCH STUDENTS Room 633, Malet St. Michel Foucault, 'The Subject and Power' in James Faubion (ed.) Michel Foucault, Power: Essential Works of Foucault, 1954 - 1984, Vol 3, (London: Penguin, 1994), pp. 326 - 348. Download here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11497626/Foucault%20The%20Subject%20and%20Power.pdf
July 2010: States of Statelessness, Birkbeck-Harvard-Sydney graduate intensive
July 2010: Power and the State: Early Modern Perspectives
1 to 4 July 2010: International conference: Psychoanalysis, Money and the Economy, Freud Museum and Birkbeck College Download full programme details
2 July 2010: 'Always ready to fight for the glory of the Empire'? Military associations and Prussian state-building in the province of Hanover, 1866-1914, Institute of Historical Research, Jasper Heinzen (Cambridge)
June: 2010: Rethinking Encounters, Ethnography and Ethnology: Continuities and Ruptures
April to May 2010: My East End study days and lecture series. Download full details .
April 2010: Imagining the City, Southern Africa: History, Culture and Society Seminar Series. Download details .
January 2010: 'Trans-Cultural History of Pain', a Wellcome-funded conference of historians, clinicians, and curators.
April 2009 to February 2010: Birkbeck College (University of London) and Wiener Library (London), joint Lecture Series. Listen to previous lectures.
December 2009: 'The crisis of the absolute monarchy in France' was jointly organised with the University of Reading and held at the British Academy.
October 2009: 'Museums and Empire' jointly organised with the British Museum and the National Maritime Museum.
September 2008: Scribal Culture in Italy, 1450 to 1650 was a highly successful workshop series funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and organised by Dr Filippo de Vivo (Birkbeck, University of London) and Professor Brian Richardson (University of Leeds).
September 2008: 'Exhibiting antiquity' (British Academy funded) brought together historians, classicists, archaeologists and museum professionals.
May 2008: 'What is masculinity? How useful is it as a historical category?' looked at masculinity from antiquity to the present.
May 2007: Graffiti Study Day. An opportunity for scholars and postgraduate students to discuss authorized and unauthorized writing in public spaces over the centuries. Download details .
February to April 2007: Birkbeck-Wiener Library Joint Lecture Series 2006/7: Prof. Tzvetan Todorov, The Memory of Concentration Camps; Prof. Ulrich Herbert, The Nazi Concentration Camps: formation, development and conceptualisation; Prof. Orlando Figes, The Gulag in Memory; Dr. Jens-Christian Wagner, Remembering the Nazi camps in East and West Germany: The case of the Mittelbau-Dora camp.
2005: 'Past Presented: Uses of the Past in Medieval European, Byzantine & Islamic Material Culture' (funded by the department and the British Academy) brought together archaeologists and historians.
2004: 'Migration and migrants in the 20th and 21st centuries', jointly organised with the University of Cambridge's Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Science and Humanities was held at the British Academy.
2003: 'Scenographies of Suicide' was jointly supported by the School and the journal Economy & Society.
2001: 'Conspiracy and Conspiracy Theories in Early Modern Britain and Europe' was held in 2001.
2000: 'Cultures of Killing.'
