ESIL Interest Group History of International Law

ESIL Interest Group History of International Law

Monday 6 June 2022

LECTURE: Daniel QUIROGA-VILLAMARIN, ""Suitable Palaces": Navigating Layers of World Ordering at the Centre William Rappard (1923-2013)" (Brussels/MS Teams, 10 June 2022)

Source: VUB CORE

Abstract:

While the intellectual trajectories of international law's "move to Institutions" in the early twentieth century has been often explored in the literature, most accounts divorce their analysis from the seemingly banal histories of "buildings, staffs, and letterheads." Conversely, in this article, I place the spatiality of the Centre William Rappard at the forefront of the history of 20th century internationalisms. Erected to serve the International Labor Organization (in 1926), this building was, among other things, repurposed to host the World Trade Organization (in 1975). In this piece, I reconstruct how struggles over claims of universality can be explored through disputes related to the materiality of this infrastructure of global governance.

This talk will be hybrid (Vrije Universiteit Brussel on-campus - Vergaderzaal PE (3C204) and online, on Teams).

Please contact Arno Swyngedouw for the MS Teams Link: arno.swyngedouw@vub.be.

Source: ESCLH blog