Call for Papers
Dates: October 2-3, 2025
Location: University of Glasgow
Keywords: Global history, transnational, nationalism, identity, decolonization, internationalism, 20th century, state formation, ethnicity, citizenship, post-1945.
The years after 1945 saw significant turbulence and transformation globally. The rise of anti-colonial movements in this period heralded the end of formal empires, a process that wildly disrupted the international status quo and opened up a wide range of possibilities for an alternative world order. Diverse approaches to decolonization presented various possibilities for a post-imperial/colonial world, including federations and other political and economic cooperation. Ultimately, post-war decolonization resulted in a host of new nation-states working to construct, define, and refine national identities in the context of a transforming international state system increasingly polarized by the ideological conflict of the Cold War. At the same time, new supranational organizations like the United Nations formed in the aftermath of the devastation wrought by ultranationalist regimes during the Second World War in the hopes of fostering a greater sense of transnational solidarity, and the resulting human rights discourse played an increasingly significant role in imagining a form of internationalist identity and obligation. Finally, ideas of race, hierarchy, and inequality that had been nurtured by European colonialism were subject to greater scrutiny. There was, then, a renewed reckoning with collective and individual identity and the place of that identity — national or otherwise — in the context of an increasingly globalized world that was rapidly divorcing itself from the rules, power structures, and concepts that had come to define the previous era.
It is these transformations in nations and identity that this workshop hopes to examine and interrogate. We are particularly interested in how these shifting conceptions of nation and identity were informed by their broader transnational context and shaped by nation-state formation and re-formation. Because of the multifaceted nature of this transforming global environment, we are open to and welcome a wide range of approaches to identity and global thinking including, but by no means limited to, anti-colonialism, decolonization, state formation, the building and rebuilding of national identity in new states, what it means to be a part of a nation, alternatives to nationalism and national identity, and international belonging.
The workshop will feature a keynote presentation by Michael Goebel, Einstein Professor of Global History at Freie Universität Berlin.
This workshop is intended for graduate students and early career researchers as an opportunity both to contribute to a quickly growing body of historical scholarship and as a forum for giving and receiving detailed feedback that will help to craft and refine future publishable work. Proposals must include a 300-word abstract and a 1-page CV and should be sent to the Global History Initiative (global.history@queensu.ca) by Friday, March 28, 2025. Selected participants will be required to submit a 4000-6000-word draft of their paper by Monday, September 1, 2025. There are a limited number of grants available for participants to help cover travel costs.
This workshop is co-organized by the Global History Initiative at Queen’s University and the . Transforming Nations and Identities in a Global World after 1945 is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Organizers:
Heather Poussard-Nadeau, Queen’s University
Mike Ross, Queen’s University
Julia McClure, University of Glasgow
Amitava Chowdhury, Queen’s University