Global History and Culture Centre Annual General Meeting
23 May 2013, 2-4pm
R1.03, Ramphal Building
University of Warwick
Present:
Anne Gerritsen (AG), Maxine Berg (MB), Giorgio Riello (GR), Dan Branch (DB),
David Hardiman (DH), Rosa Salzberg (RS), Rebecca Earle (RE), Bishnu Gupta
(BG), David Anderson (DAnderson), Hanna Hodacs (HH), Michael Harrigan
(MH), Ross Forman (RF), David Arnold (DA), Howard Chiang (HC), Peer Vries
(PV), John Darwin (JD), Amy Evans (AE)
1. Welcome
AG welcomed everyone, and extended a special welcome to new colleagues Howard
Chiang and David Anderson to their first GHCC AGM. Thanks were extended to Peer
Vries, who has served as our external advisor for the past three years.
Congratulations to Bronwen Everill who has received a three-year Leverhulme Early
Career Fellowship at King’s College London, and thus sadly will be leaving us in the
summer.
2. Apologies were received from Felicia Gottmann, Gurminder Bhambra, Bronwen
Everill, Chris Nierstrasz, and David Washbrook.
3. Minutes from the previous meeting were circulated and accepted as a true record.
4. Director’s report
The Director presented her report (see separate document) and emphasised the
following points:
A. It’s been a busy and stimulating year overall. Thanks were extended to Amy for
her hard work in organising all the events throughout the year.
B. Several major conferences were organised, with the Global Commodities final
conference as a flagship event this year. The Centre will use this as a template for
an annual event. The next one is on ’Loyalism and Empire’, to be organised by
David Anderson and Dan Branch on 9-10 Dec 2013. Any suggestions for a theme
for the 2014 conference are welcome.
C. Professor Matthias Middell (University of Leipzig) has agreed to serve as the new
external advisor for the next three years. Now that Peer Vries’ term has come to
an end, it will be good to continue to have a continental perspective on the
Centre and its activities.
D. The History Department has appointed eight new full-time members of staff. A
number of these have ‘global’ interests, and they will be warmly invited to join
the activities of the Centre. These include the following:
 Aditya Sarkar, who joins us from Goettingen, and who works on Modern
Indian History
 John Baldwin, currently an early-career Leverhulme fellow from Queen Mary,
who works on the Middle East, with a special interest in Ottoman legal
history
 Charles Walton, who joins us from Yale, and is an eighteenth-century French
historian with an interest in the global history of human rights
 Joachim Haeberlen, a German historian with a PhD from Chicago, who works
on the history of the working classes and history of protest movements, who
has published in the Journal of Global History on the global history of
communism.
 Camillia Cowling, who works on slavery and Latin America.
E. Discussion of teaching UG and PG students in the field of Global History
o Though the number of postgraduate studies is modest in the Centre, all
the activities have shown that undergraduate and postgraduate students
are increasingly engaging with Global History. DAnderson mentioned that
he will be working to develop more synergies in the graduate offerings of
the department, and that graduate recruitment will be on of the focus
areas for the department as a whole for next year.
o PV mentioned that it would be worth looking at the global history training
programmes offered jointly by Pat Manning, Heather Streets and
o DH mentioned that the third year core historiography module has been
increasingly ‘globalized’.
o GR mentioned that the first year module ‘Making History’ will begin with
a 4-week block on global history, ensuring that every new UG student will
begin with a sense of what global history is.
5. GHCC Funding is currently available to all University staff and supervised PG. It aims
to broaden activities and enhance the visibility of the Centre. A list of funded
activities was circulated for information. The new Directors of the GHCC will have to
decide whether they wish to restrict applications to the Fund to ‘members’ (see next
item).
6. Governance and membership of the Centre
The current ‘Membership’ is open to all but little input from broad range of people
has been received. Three reasons for change, to clarify both the benefits and the
minimum expectations of the members; to form a small group involved in the
management of the Centre and attend regular meetings; to distribute GHCC Fund
more efficiently to benefit the research activities and to increase the visibility of the
Centre.
Proposal:
a. To form a Management Committee to carry out the day-to-day management of
the Centre
b. ‘Membership’ remains open to all members of the University but will be subject
to approval by the Management Committee upon submission of an application.
Members are expected to play an active role by attending regular Centre
activities.
c. Centre will continue to have external members, who may also have the status of
external fellows of the History Department
The proposal was discussed and accepted. Other points raised included:
o JD explained that the Oxford Global Centre has a steering committee
of about 4-5 people, with a much larger advisory committee that
meets once a term, propose ideas for projects and take care of the
infrastructure of the Centre.
o The option of nominating graduate students to become members
o Have ‘visiting’ members’ for those there for a short time.
7. Reports from John Darwin and Peer Vries
Both external Fellows presented their views of the previous year’s activities.
a. Both commented on the impressive volume of activities
b. Great success in achieving external grants for projects led by the associated
members, but this will become an ever-increasingly competitive challenge.
Balancing the management of these projects with individual research projects
also remains a challenge.
c. Research strength (‘competitive advantage’ of the Centre) remains in the early
modern period/material-culture history
d. Successfully hosting high profile visitors contributed to raise Centre’s visibility
and reputation, and we need to ensure this can continue.
e. The Centre may need to think about how far it wishes to be a more or less
cohesive intellectual community, as opposed to a ‘facilitating’ institution for
those whose interests are at least to some degree global
f. MA students’ number is modest.
8. Future plans for the GHCC funding
1. Planned high-profile lecture series on the theme of ‘Power in Global History’
2. Pursue established and develop further collaboration with international
institutions
3. We need to organise a panel to join the Economic History Society 2014 Annual
Conference
4. The Centre is financially secure, but we cannot be complacent about this for the
future.
9. AOB
There was no other business.