Global History and Culture Centre
Steering committee Meeting
Thursday 21 May 2015
1:00-2:30 – H545, Humanities Building
1. Welcome to all.
2. Attendance
David Anderson, Dan Branch, Maxine Berg, Giorgio Riello, Anne Gerritsen, Claudia Stein,
Charles Walton, Amy Evans
Apologies
Bishnu Gupta
3. Finances
The University approved a budget for the GHCC for the next three years of £40,000 per year.
A table of expenditure was shown to all committee members and accepted.
A considerable proportion of our budget has been allocated for Bursaries and Scholarships.
The PhD Scholarship of this year will be followed by an MA bursary for next year in the
amount of c. £15,000.
The GHCC funding scheme received 9 applications and 8 were awarded in total of £12,421.
The Centre would continue to support the activities that would raise the profile of the
Centre.
Any underspending of the annual budget cannot carry over to the next academic year.
4. Annual Lecture for 2016: Nile Green
The Annual Lecture next year will be by Professor Nile Green (UCLA). It will take place on
Wednesday, 2nd March.
5. Honorary Professorship: Nile Green
James Baldwin has prepared papers to propose Nile Green as an Honorary Professor of the
Centre. One more external referee is needed and suggestions are welcome.
6. Next year’s AGM – date and conference
It was proposed to move the date of our AGM to 12th May, 2016. This could coincide with a
conference organized by Giorgio Riello.
7. Workshops and seminars 2014-15.
A list of activities was tabled.
8. Leverhulme Early Career Fellow
Dr. Michael Bycroft was appointed to a Leverhulme Early Career fellowship for 3 years.
Michael researches the global history of gems in eighteenth-century France. He ran a
successful conference ‘Gems in Transit’ on 18-19 May.
9. Future workshops and conferences
I.
The Space Between: Micro History and Global History
Organized by Maxine Berg and John-Paul Ghobrial – Venice -26-28 February, 2016 –
joint funding sought with Oxford.
II.
Dan is to organise a PG Training/Summer School in California in April 2016, funded
by Warwick/California scheme.
III.
Conference: ‘Economic Change in Global History’ organized by Giorgio Riello and
Tirthankar Roy (LSE), May 2016
IV.
Workshop to be organized by Robert Fletcher.
Seminar speakers for next year:
Paul Warde (Cambridge) (with Early Modern Group) – 27th January
Sarah Easterby-Smith (St. Andrews) (with Eighteenth-Century Centre) – 11th Feb.
David Todd (Kings London) (with European History Centre) – 24th Feb.
Marilyn Booth (Oxford) (9 March) and Ruth Harris (Oxford) (20 Jan.) will each give History
seminars.
Emma Teng – summer term.
One or two speakers are needed for the Autumn term.
10. Research Projects
Maxine Berg’s ERC project, ‘Europe’s Asian Centuries’ finished in September, 2014, and the
Final Report was submitted in October, 2014.
Giorgio Riello’s Leverhulme Luxury network finished in March, 2015. Two conferences were
held in this year, one at the Getty in Florence in September, 2014, and one at the Shard in
London in collaboration with WBS in February, 2015.
There have been two meetings with the British Library in a bid to do an ESRC application and
a Leverhulme application on Indian Ocean Trade. There has been some progress with
application writing, but the BL does not yet have collaborative status with the ESRC. We
hope this hurdle will be overcome soon.
Claudia Stein and Charles Walton have applied to for a Leverhulme Research Interchange on
Global Human Rights.
David’s new project ‘Africa Military’ shall start in Spring 2017.
11. Global History MA teaching
The Global History MA ran this year with a small number of students. It remains on the
books next year, but subsequently will be a stream within a general History MA.
12. Website
The current website is not functioning well as a portal to reach out world. It needs updating
and further development. It was proposed for the department to award £2k per year for
some postgraduates to assist with the department’s websites.
13. CUP and Palgrave Book series
Giorgio Riello is in negotiation with CUP over a book series. Contributors are welcome.
Maxine Berg has a book series with Palgrave – ‘Europe’s Asian Centuries’. Two volumes are
in Press.
Other Publications:
Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello have published one volume based on recent conferences
from the Global Commodities network; two more are in press.
Other book news: Howard Chiang, ed., Psychiatry and Chinese History (2014)
Giorgio Riello’s Cotton: the Fabric that Made the Modern World (2013) won the World
History Association Bentley Book prize.
14. AOB
Sam Moyn, as IAS Visiting Fellow, is visiting next week and taking part in several events.
There is a workshop: Global History of Disease at Oxford.