Global History and Culture Centre, University of Warwick
Directors’ Report 2013-14
Daniel Branch & Giorgio Riello
22 May 2013
1. Introduction
2013-14 has been a year of consolidation of existing projects and of laying foundations
for the future development of the Global History and Culture Centre (GHCC). Major
research projects, ‘Europe’s Asian Centuries’ (Maxine Berg) and ‘Empire Loyalists
(David Anderson & Daniel Branch) have been completed or will be in the near future.
Others, most notably ‘The Luxury Network’, have continued successfully through the
year. These projects have led to numerous events being held at Warwick during 201314, which added to the usual full programme of workshops and seminars.
The most important development of the year has been the formal creation of three
programmes of activity, which was brought about by the recent appointment of new
members. The programmes, discussed in more detail below, are:
 ‘Material Life in a Globalising World’ (led by Maxine Berg, Giorgio Riello & Anne
Gerritsen)
 ‘Power and Politics in the Colonial and Post-Colonial World’ (led by David
Anderson, James Baldwin and Daniel Branch)
 ‘Global Humanity? Possibilities and Changes’ (led by Claudia Stein and Charles
Walton).
2. Visitors
The GHCC supported two Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) visiting fellows in 201314. Deidre Colman (University of Melbourne) was with us in January and Jeremy
Prestholdt (University of California – San Diego) will visit in June. The GHCC is also
funding visits by Nile Green (UCLA) and Patrick Manning (Pittsburgh) in May 2014.
3. Seminar and workshop series
Two seminars by visiting speakers (Matt Romaniello (Hawaii) and Kate Lowe (QML))
were organised in conjunction with other seminar series in the department. We also
hosted a ‘Global Research Exchange’ in conjunction with the department’s seminar in
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the autumn term, during which three new members of the GHCC discussed their
work.
The aim, which was achieved, was to increase cooperation between different research
centres in the Department and bring global history to a wider audience. We will
continue to pursue this strategy next year.
Other seminars were organised on an ad-hoc basis to take advantage of speakers
visiting the university, such as Dorethee Wierling (Hamburg) in April 2014.
A programme of workshops was organised this year instead of the regular seminars
arranged in previous years. The workshops, which made up the main activities of the
year, were a great success. Their main aim was to provide a platform for the two new
strands of activities hosted by the GHCC:

Power and Politics
A ‘African Responses to Global Challenges’ workshop brought Miles Larmer (Oxford),
Kenda Mutongi (Williams) and Laura Fair (Michigan State University) to the GHCC in
November 2013. The ‘Allies and Exits: Local Collaborators after Rebellion and
Counterinsurgency’ workshop in April 2014 hosted 16 speakers from the UK, Europe
and the US as part of the ‘Empire Loyalists’ project. A further workshop on ethnicity,
violence and Kenyan politics will be organised during Prestholdt’s visit in June.

Global Humanity?
A ‘Human rights in Global History’ workshop was held in January 2014, organised by
Charles Walton and involving Olivier Grenouilleau (Paris IV), Fabian Klose (Mainz),
Saul Dubow (QML) and Jenny Raflik-Grenouilleau (Cergy-Pointoise). A further
workshop organised by Claudia Stein on ‘Health and Human Rights in a Global
Perspective’ was held in May 2014 in collaboration with the Centre for the History of
Medicine.

Material Life in a Globalising World
The GHCC’s existing core interests in trade and material culture were reflected in the
‘Japan, Asia and the World Trading System in the Long Nineteenth Century’ workshop
in February. This workshop was hosted by Maxine Berg and Giorgio Riello and
brought a group of Japan-based historians, led by Kaoru Sugihara, to Warwick in
February 2014.
4. Major Events
The GHCC has been involved in hosting four major conferences and workshops this
year. The first was the ‘Alien Nations’ conference in April 2014, which was the GHCC’s
annual conference and funded by the AHRC as part of the ‘Empire Loyalists’ project.
Although attendance was smaller than last year’s material culture conference, it was a
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rewarding event. Papers were presented by 18 speakers from the UK, US, Japan and
Kazakhstan.
The Leverhulme-funded Luxury Network workshop, ‘The Geographies of Luxury’,
drew a similarly international body of participants to Warwick for three days in May
2014 and to great effect. Speakers from the UK, US, Germany, China, Sweden and
Australia discussed historical and contemporary debates about luxury in Asia and
Europe.
Members of the ‘Material Life’ strand were also significantly involved in the Economic
History Society’s annual conference, which was hosted at Warwick. Giorgio Riello
chaired a panel, which included two postgraduate members of the centre, Meike
Fellinger and Karolina Hutkova. Riello and Luca Mola’ formed a panel on ‘The State
and the Shaping of Good Taste.’ Members of the ‘Europe’s Asian Centuries’ project led
by Maxine Berg also spoke at the conference and the GHCC sponsored the conference
reception.
The most important event of the year will be ‘The Future of World and Global History’
workshop to be held on 23 May. This workshop will bring together academics from
across the world to discuss the development of the field of global history in terms of
research, funding and teaching.
5. Collaborations and international visibility
As is clear from the activities we organised this year, we have continued to work
closely with numerous institutions. These include as part of the Leverhulme-funded
‘Luxury Network’ (Melbourne University, the V&A, the University of Stockholm and
the University of Bologna); the EUI in Florence; Birkbeck College, University of
London; the British Institute in Eastern Africa in Nairobi, and the Institute of
Advanced Humanistic Studies (IAHS) at Fudan in Shanghai.
Plans for closer collaboration with the British Library and British Museum on a joint
project on the Indian Ocean are at an advanced stage.
We have also spent a great deal of time exploring collaborations within Warwick. A
planned joint master’s degree in Global Studies is under discussion with the Economics
department. The Luxury Network is currently planning an international symposium
in February 2015 in collaboration with the Warwick Business School. This event will be
the first major event of the new Warwick Business School, London Campus.
6. Impact
As reported in 2013, the GHCC was responsible for two of the five departmental
Impact Case Studies that went forward in REF 2013. One of these was on Global
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Commodities, and is led by Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello; the other was centred
on the Waddesdon Trade Card collection, led by Maxine Berg. The Warwick
Knowledge Centre now hosts a number of items related to global themes, including a
series of podcasts centred on global objects and a website on global luxury.
Impact activities are now built into the GHCC’s activities as a matter of routine. Lifen
Zhang, associate editor of the Financial Times and Editor in Chief of FT China gave the
keynote lecture at the Luxury Network’s workshop in May 2014. Representatives of the
UK’s Ministry of Defence attended the ‘Allies and Exits’ workshop in April and
Anderson and Branch have been invited to brief the ministry on their ‘Empire
Loyalists’ research project in August. This is in addition to their regular media and
policy work on contemporary East Africa.
7. GHCC website
The website was redesigned in the autumn to make it more welcoming to external
visitors and more coherent for the centre’s members.
8. GHCC research fund
The GHCC received 12 applications from its members, 7 of which were supported for a
total of £3,700. These included personal research, support towards publication and the
organisation of events.
9.
Membership
The GHCC has currently 31 members, and 10 external fellows. In the past year 9 new
members were appointed. They are: James Baldwin (History); Alice Brook (History);
Camillia Cowling (CAS); Joachim Haberlen (History); Kirsty Hooper (Hispanic
Studies); Christabelle Peters (Hispanic Studies); Matteo Pretelli (Italian); Aditya Sarkar
(History); Charles Walton (History).
10. Research priorities
Strengthened further by the arrival of new members in 2013, the GHCC is now ready
to expand substantially its activities and attract new funding. As stated above and
proposed in last year’s report, this year saw the creation of three distinct research
programmes in the GHCC. With institutional support, the GHCC is well-positioned to
strengthen existing research clusters such as African history in a global context, and
lead the development of new areas of research, including global intellectual and
political history. If able to do so, the Centre’s international reputation as home to
innovative and path-breaking research will be protected for the next five years.
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An application for increased funding to support this expansion is currently under
consideration by the university.
The three programmes are:
1. Material Life in a Globalising World
To date, the Centre has obtained international recognition for its research on ‘Material
Life in a Globalising World’ focusing material culture, trade and manufacturing, with
particular interests in the ties between Europe, India and China. This research, led by
Berg, Gerritsen and Riello received financial support from the AHRC, the British
Academy, the ERC and the Leverhulme Trust.
This programme will consider how the global trade of commodities and goods have
shaped the lives of people across the globe. This programme builds on a series of major
grants including a ERC grant ‘Europe’s Asian Centuries’ and important research
networks grants (two AHRC and one Leverhulme-funded) that have allowed extensive
collaboration with other universities in Europe, Asia, North America and Australia.
2. Power and Politics in the Colonial and Postcolonial World
Initially built around on the department’s expertise in African history (Anderson &
Branch), this programme will expand to explore the ideas and practice of politics in a
variety of imperial and post-imperial settings. That entails a particular interest in
histories of conflict, process of imperial expansion and decline, decolonisation and the
place of identity in imperial history.
3. Global Humanity? Possibilities and Challenges
Building on the expertise of new colleagues and relying on the existing strengths of
members of Warwick’s History of Medicine, the programme critically explores the
impact of globalisation on individuals and populations in the areas of health,
citizenship, human rights and democratisation, the history of capitalism and labour,
and the history of political activism and resistance movements.
11. Future plans
The aim for the next five years is to expand the activities of the Global History and
Culture Centre into new areas of research. The main aims are:



to allow the GHCC to remain a key international centre for the promotion of global
history broadly defined and thus contribute to the Warwick’s internationalisation
strategy;
to expand the Centre’s activities to include the expertise of new colleagues so that the
GHCC will act as a major research platform for the Department, Faculty and
University;
to secure future research funding in an increasingly competitive environment.
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As well as the regular activities of the GHCC, the following are in various stages of
planning:



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AHRC Project Grant in partnership with the British Library and the British Museum on
‘Commodities and the Making of the Indian Ocean’ (Riello and Berg) – Submission
Autumn 2014.
AHRC Standard Research Grant on ‘Chennai’s Twentieth Century: From Colonial Rule
to ‘Global City’ (Hodges) – submission Autumn 2014.
ERC Advanced Grant on ‘Violence and Empire in the Indian Ocean’ (Anderson) –
submission Summer 2014.
‘Connections and Disconnections in East Africa’s Global History’, international
conference to be organised in conjunction with the Department of Archaeology,
University of York and the British Institute in Eastern Africa, Nairobi, March 2015.
Dan Branch
Giorgio Riello
May 2014
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