CALL FOR PAPERS: Historical Networks Research Conference, "Visualization" (University of Lausanne, 8-10 July 2024, DEADLINE: 31 January 2024)

Description:

The Historical Network Research community is very pleased to announce the call for papers for the Historical Networks Research conference 2024 which will take place at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland), from Monday 8 July until Wednesday 10 July, 2024.

Historical networks

The phenomena studied by the historical sciences are, by their very nature, complex situations: they involve, for example, interwoven personal relationships, collective dynamics that structure social and cultural space, or political and economic systems that operate at local and global levels. The network metaphor is frequently used to describe this entanglement. In recent decades, however, historians have begun to think about ways of formalizing this approach, appropriating the concepts and tools of graph theory to provide a new perspective on archives. The application of formal network analysis to history is now a highly fertile field of experimentation and research. It can be used to analyze the geographical logics of major circulation networks, to highlight brokers in affiliation networks, to compile family trees to reveal their points of contact, to study the occurrences and co-occurrences of concepts in serial texts, to show the evolution of personal social networks, etc. And through a great deal of empirical work, the specific features that historical disciplines bring to network science become apparent: particular attention to the modeling of data that is often incomplete and uncertain, the need to take account of temporality in all its finesse, the necessity to find a language that allows mathematical results to be interpreted in a qualitative narrative.

In 2009, following a workshop dedicated to the application of social network analysis to history, a small community of practice, the Historical Network Research community, was created. It evolved into a series of workshops and then an international conference, of which the present edition is the 9th to date, after conferences in Hamburg, Ghent, Lisbon, Turku, Brno, Luxembourg and Mainz. 2013 saw the creation of the HNR Collective Bibliography, a central tool for sharing the community’s scientific output. In 2017, the first issue of JHNR, the Journal of Historical Network Research, was published, allowing everyone to share their research in Open Access. Other resources include a YouTube channel with recorded lectures and a newsletter.

Conference focus: Visualization

Network visualization is often the first thing to be seen, whether it’s an illegible but colorful node-link diagram, an elaborate sociogram, an austere matrix or a fancy flow map. Because of our discomfort with basing our interpretation on an object apparently built on somewhat subjective foundations, because they are very likely to be influenced by a graphic bias, we often relegate visualizations to a minor role in our exploratory approaches, preferring the cold (apparent) scientificity of graph metrics. But just because we see naive uses of network visualization doesn’t mean it can’t be a highly effective tool for understanding, exploring and communicating our research data. One of the ambitions of the conference is therefore to question our use of network visualization in history, a concern that will be reflected in particular in the workshops and keynotes.

Note that the HNR conference is open to all subjects involving network analysis in historical disciplines, so the thematic emphasis of this 2024 edition has no impact on the selection of contributions. The only effect will be that an image will be requested for each paper (after the review phase, if not included in the submitted abstract) to create a gallery that will be displayed during the conference to spark discussion about our network visualization practices.

Topics

For our 2024 conference, we welcome contributions discussing any historical period and geographical area. Authors may be historians, linguists, librarians, archaeologists, art historians, computer scientists, social scientists as well as scholars from other disciplines working with historical data. Topics may include, but are not limited to:Applications of network analysis to history, art history, ancient history, intellectual history, economic history, social history, media history, political history, history of religions, biography, public history, micro-history, postcolonial history, global history, archaeology, literary history, cultural history, etc.

Analysis of specific network types, such as geospatial networks, temporal and dynamic networks, bipartite networks, multi-layer networks, multiplex networks, etc.

Methodological contributions concerning the applicability of network analysis to history, including, for example, modeling, ontologies, linked data, the use of graph metrics, visual network analysis, etc.

Pedagogical contributions, presenting teaching scenarios, literacy questions, software or feature presentations, interfaces, etc.

Formats

Long papers

Long papers consist of a 20-minute presentation followed by 10 minutes of discussion, and are intended to present comprehensive research. An abstract of 500-1000 words is required, including at least 3 citations. It should contain a description of the paper’s subject and research questions, an overview of the data used and methods employed, a discussion of the research results and possibly the wider implication for network analysis in history.

Short papers

Short papers consist of a 10-minute presentation followed by 5 minutes of discussion, and are intended to present research in progress. An abstract of 300-500 words is required, including at least 3 citations. It should contain a brief description of the subject and the research questions, an overview of the data used and the methods employed, a discussion of any results or questions still open at this stage.

Submission guidelines

Abstracts must be submitted via the conference management platform (https://hnr2024.sciencesconf.org/) by January 31, 2024.

The author (or corresponding author in the case of multi-authored papers) must create an account on the platform and then fill in the form, copying the abstract in full text (no PDF or other attachments).

Abstracts can be written in English or French.

Citations should use the Chicago Manual of Style 17th Edition Author Date style (author-date in the text, then full reference at the end).

Including an image in the abstract is encouraged to allow a general discussion of our network visualization practices. If, for any reason, the submitted version does not contain any, authors of accepted papers will be invited to add an image and caption at a later stage. Abstracts and images will then be published on the conference website ahead of the event and archived in a book of abstracts on Zenodo.

Authors’ presence at the conference

Although it is possible to follow the conference via streaming, it is nevertheless an on-site event. By submitting a paper, authors are aware that at least one person will need to be in Lausanne to present it.

Important dates

31.01.2024 deadline for submissions

29.02.2024 notification of acceptance/rejection

01.03.2024 registration opening

30.06.2024 last possible registration for participants

8-10.07.2024 conference

31.08.2024 invitation of selected articles to JHNR

                                    

                                                More information with HNR.

CALL FOR PAPERS: "Arguing over Empire: Hugo Grotius, European Expansionism and Slavery" (University of Amsterdam, 7 June 2024, DEADLINE: 15 January 2024)

 Call for papers

Arguing over Empire: Hugo Grotius, European Expansionism and Slavery

Location: University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam Law Hub

Date: June 7th, 2024

Key-note: Prof. John Cairns (University of Edinburgh)

Workshop Theme

The workshop ‘Arguing over Empire: Hugo Grotius, European Expansionism and Slavery’ is part of a series of conferences organized by the Grotiana Foundation preceding the celebration in 2025 of the 400th anniversary of Grotius’ opus magnum On the Law of War and Peace (De iure belli ac pacis) published in 1625. Previous conferences in this series have dealt with, e.g., ‘Grotius’ Contribution to Commercial and Maritime Law’ and ‘Non-consequential theories of strict liability in historical perspective.’ The workshop is co-organized by the Paul Scholten Centre for Jurisprudence of the University of Amsterdam in cooperation with the Amsterdam Law Hub, with Grotiana, and with the ‘Servus-project’ funded by the NWO.

Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) is generally regarded as one of the ‘founding fathers of modern international law.’ However, he was also one of the early architects of Dutch colonial and imperial rule in the East Indies. Between 1604 and 1615, he served the Dutch East India Company (VOC) as a legal advisor and political lobbyist. In this capacity, he wrote memoranda and policy documents providing legal and political justifications for the Company’s commercial and military activities in monsoon Asia. In 1604, Grotius was commissioned by the VOC to write a treatise to defend the seizure of a Portuguese vessel off the coast of Johor (present-day Singapore). In the only published chapter of the treatise during his lifetime, titled The Free Sea (Mare Liberum), he argued that the Portuguese violated the natural rights of the Dutch by preventing them from sailing to the East Indies and engaging in trade with indigenous populations. As judicial recourse was lacking, even a private trading company such as the VOC could wage a ‘just war’ to enforce its natural rights. Grotian thinking about natural law, contracts and just war thus legitimized Dutch expansion overseas and the dispossession of the native.

Grotius’ On the Law of War and Peace is another case in point. Although the author was an exile in Paris by then, he relied on many years of practical experience as a VOC advisor and lobbyist in writing his magnum opus. In On the Law of War and Peace, he elaborates the views presented in On the Law of Prize and Booty by conceptualizing the natural rights to travel and free passage, the rights to settle in uninhabited lands and use natural resources, and the right to free trade between ‘persons at a distance’, invoked by Europeans to demand access to non-European markets and territories. On the Law of War and Peace also provides a legal justification of slavery as part of natural law and the law of nations. In the author’s view, those who are defeated in a just war can be enslaved under the law of nations, while human beings may also ‘voluntarily’ submit to slavery under natural law. Moreover, the children of the enslaved inherit the unfree status of their parents according to On the Law of War and Peace.

The aim of this workshop is to explore the many connections between Grotius’ thinking about natural law and the law of nations and his full-throated defense of European expansion overseas and slavery. We invite contributors to critically examine these connections by addressing the imperialist and colonialist readings of Grotius’ theory of natural rights, just war, property,

unequal treaties and alliances, monopoly contracts, slavery, and the role of private actors (e.g., trading companies). We specifically welcome contributions that engage with the following questions:

· What were non-European responses to, or engagement with, such imperialist and colonialist readings? For instance, how did East-Indian rulers receive and interpret, or indeed resist, Grotian conceptualizations of natural rights and (monopoly) contracts? Were alternative conceptualizations proposed to contest Grotius’ justification of slavery?

· What was the relationship between the ‘Grotian tradition of international law’ and colonial practices in the early modern and modern eras? How were Grotian discourses of international law used to justify colonial warfare, native dispossession and slavery in the Americas, Asia and Africa between the 17th and 20th centuries? For instance, how did Grotian ideas about natural law, freedom of trade and humanitarianism (protecting the oppressed from inhumane treatment) contribute to justifying colonial warfare, and what role did private trading companies play in these wars?

In addressing questions like these, we seek to understand the ambivalent relation between, on the one hand, Grotius’ innovate contributions to international law and humanitarianism, and, on the other hand, the use of his concepts to justify (Western) colonialism and imperialism.

Conditions

A paper proposal of max. 300 words should be sent to j.giltaij@uva.nl and m.dewilde@uva.nl. The deadline for submissions is January 15th, 2024. Applicants will be notified by February 26th, 2024 whether their paper proposal has been accepted or not. The organizing committee will use two criteria in the selection of paper proposals: intellectual quality and potential fit with the workshop theme. The workshop is meant to be interdisciplinary and small-scale, allowing plenty of time for discussion and interaction. Available slots are limited. However, the committee’s aim is to invite speakers from diverse backgrounds (age, geography, gender, and career status). The workshop takes place on location. Speakers who are unable to participate in person may do so online. Unfortunately, the organizing committee is not able to cover the costs of accommodation or travel. Selected speakers are requested to obtain funding themselves. Each speaker will be given a 30-minutes time slot, which includes 20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for questions and discussion. Our aim is to publish (revised versions of) the presented papers in a leading international journal related to Grotius, the history of international law, or the history of colonialism.

Organizing Committee

Inge Van Hulle (Leuven University and Max Planck Institute, Frankfurt am Main)

Martine van Ittersum (University of Dundee)

Jacob Giltaij (University of Amsterdam)

Jeroen Vervliet (Max Planck Institute, Luxembourg)

Marc de Wilde (University of Amsterdam)

BOOK: Florian WAGNER, "Colonial Internationalism and the Governmentality of Empire, 1893–1982" (CUP, 2022)

Source: CUP

Description:

In 1893, a group of colonial officials from thirteen countries abandoned their imperial rivalry and established the International Colonial Institute (ICI), which became the world's most important colonial think tank of the twentieth century. Through the lens of the ICI, Florian Wagner argues that this international cooperation reshaped colonialism as a transimperial and governmental policy. The book demonstrates that the ICI's strategy of using indigenous institutions and customary laws to encourage colonial development served to maintain colonial rule even beyond the official end of empires. By selectively choosing loyalists among the colonized to participate in the ICI, it increased their autonomy while equally delegitimizing more radical claims for independence. The book presents a detailed study of the ICI's creation, the transcolonial activities of its prominent members, its interactions with the League of Nations and fascist governments, and its role in laying the groundwork for the structural and discursive dependence of the Global South after 1945.

Table of contents:

1 - “More Beautiful than the Nationalist Thought”?

pp 24-63

Colonialist Fraternization and the Birth of Transnational Cooperation

2 - A Transcolonial Governmentality Sui Generis

pp 64-109

The Invention of Emulative Development

3 - Politics of Comparison

pp 110-148

The Dutch Model and the Reform of Colonial Training Schools

4 - Cultivating the Myth of Transcolonial Progress

pp 149-172

The ICI and the Global Career of Buitenzorg’s Agronomic Laboratory

5 - The Adatization of Islamic Law and Muslim Codes of Development

pp 173-208

6 - Creating an “Anti-Geneva Bloc” and the Question of Representivity

pp 209-256

7 - Inventing Fascist Eurafrica at the Volta Congress

pp 257-280

8 - False Authenticity

pp 281-314

The Fokon’olona and the Cooperative World Commonwealth

9 - “That Has Been Our Program for Fifty Years”

pp 315-348

Sustained Development and Loyal Emancipation after 1945

Conclusion

pp 349-356

More information with CUP.