TCD: CWS: Director’s Report: 2013-2014
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Centre for War Studies, School of Histories and Humanities, Trinity
College Dublin.
Director’s report for 2013-2014
This report covers the period from August 2013 to August 2014.
1. Staff
I took over from Professor Alan Kramer as Director of the Centre from August 2013. Dr
Tomás Irish, postdoctoral fellow to the College working on the official history of TCD in the
era of the First World War and the Irish Revolution, replaced Dr Martina Salvante as the
Associate Director at the same time. The Centre employs no paid staff. I would like to pay
tribute to Dr Irish for his excellent work in the day-to-day running of the Centre as Associate
Director. It has been a pleasure working with him.
2. Funding
In 2010, the Centre was fortunate in obtaining a benefaction for the project that led to the
publication of Towards Commemoration: Ireland in War and Revolution, 1912-1923
(Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2013). This provided €10,000 for the general activities of the
CWS. The balance of that funding in September 2013 was €3,559.88. In 2013-2014, the
Centre succeeded in raising substantial additional funds. It was part of the successful bid
including three other universities (Swansea, York and the Free University, Berlin) for funding
from HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) for a project on: ‘Making War,
Mapping Europe: Militarized Cultural Encounters, 1790-1920’. Competition was intense, and
this was the only Irish success in the entire HERA call. This brought some €200,000 to the
Centre over a three period (or €70,000 per year). The bulk of this is for two postdoctoral
fellows, but a portion of the balance is available for overhead expenses to the Centre. The
Centre was awarded €3,600 by the Trinity Long Room Hub (TLRH) Research Incentive
Scheme for a workshop on civilians in siege warfare (see below). It also raised some €20,000
from various sources, including a grant from the Canadian Social Sciences Research Council,
in order to mount a major conference on universities in the era of the First World War (see
below). Overall, therefore, the Centre generated income of about €96,000 in 2013-2014.
3. Space.
In year under review the Centre moved from its office on the 6th floor of the Arts Building to
a room in the Provost’s Stables and used the TRIARC seminar room for many of its events.
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Opinion varied on the suitability of the latter, the main drawback being that it was hard to
access by visitors to the seminars. The one room, however, is not sufficient given that there
were two postdoctoral fellows availing of it in principle. The fact that one of them (Dr Fergus
Robson, fellow on the HERA project ‘Making War, Mapping Europe’, was away for a good
deal of the time after his appointment in January 2014 resolved the problem in an ad hoc way.
However, the issue of space is one of the most pressing ones faced by the Centre.
4. Activities 2014-15
4.1 Seminars
The seminar series was integrated with that of the sister Centre for War Studies in UCD as a
single programme, jointly advertised through the networks of both centres. For the UCD
seminars, please consult the UCD website.
Michaelmas term 2013
3 October 2013: John Horne (TCD): ‘Thoughts on the timeframes of the Great War.’
17 October 2013: Fergus Robson (TCD): ‘La première battaillon de l'Aveyron: Volunteers
and Deserters between Rodez and Ajaccio, 1791-1794.’
31 October 2013: Themed Session: Political and Paramilitary Violence, 1917-21:
James Matthews (UCD): 'Bulwarks Against Bolshevism: The Counterrevolution in Spain,
1917-1923.'
Mark Jones (UCD): ‘The false Rosa Luxemburg and other tales: violence, atrocities, and
political mobilisation in the German Revolution of 1918-19.’
14 November 2013: Tomás Irish (TCD): ‘Allied Universities and Cultural Diplomacy during
the Great War.’
12 December 2013: Themed Session: Culture and Humanitarianism in the Cold War
Patrick Bernhard (UCD): ‘Towards a Cultural History of the Cold War.’
Kevin O’Sullivan (NUIG): ‘Diplomacy of the stomach: NGOs, humanitarianism and the Cold
War.’
Hilary term 2014
23 January 2014: Tamara Scheer (Ludwig-Boltzmann-Institut for Social Science History in
Vienna), TCD: ‘The Hope for Unification and the Fear of Disintegration: the Effect of
Multilingualism in the Habsburg Army (1868-1918)’
13 March 2014: Alan Donohue (TCD): 'Hitler as Military Commander: Operations in
Southern Russia in 1942'.
3 April 2014: Catriona Kennedy (University of York): ‘British Soldiers as Travellers during
the Napoleonic Wars.’
4.2 Lectures.
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4.2.1. Annual ‘War in History’ public lecture (28 November 2013).
Bill Nasson: (Stellenbosch University): ‘Dominion with a Difference: South Africa and the
Great War.’
4.2.2. Public lecture series: Europe’s Violent Memories: War, Trauma and Identity in
the Twentieth Century.
In partnership with the Centre for European Studies and the TLRH, the Centre organized a
series of public lectures on the above topic. Held in the TLRH, attendance on every occasion
was near or at capacity, averaging 90 to 100 people.
8 October 2013: Robert Gerwarth (UCD): ‘The vanquished: Europe and the aftermath of the
Great War.’
12 November 2013: Michael Richards (University of the West of England): ‘A time of
silence? Legacies of the Civil War in Spain after Franco.’
21 January 2014: Patricia Clavin (University of Oxford): ‘To talk peace in the parables of
war: The League of Nations after World War I.’
25 February 2014: Annette Becker (Université de Paris-Ouest-Nanterre): ‘Towards the
concept of genocide (1915-1948): Raphael Lemkin and the extermination of the Ottoman
Armenians.’
27 March 2014: Jay Winter (Yale University): ‘War and martyrdom in the twentieth century.’
15 April 2014: Bill Rosenberg (University of Michigan): ‘Naturalizing Hobbes: Russia’s
violent “Life in Catastrophe” and its legacies in Soviet Russia after the Civil War.’
4.2.3. Holocaust Memorial Lecture (18 February 2014: organized in association with the
Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, TCD, and the Holocaust Education Trust
Ireland).
Renée Poznanski (Ben Gurion University): ‘Being Jewish in World War Two France.’
4.3. Workshops
4.3.1. ‘The Great War in Africa’ (28 November 2013, 2pm-6pm):
James Kitchen (UCD): Egypt
John Horne (TCD): Algeria
Felipe Ribeiro de Meneses (NUIM): Portuguese Africa
David Killingray (emeritus, Goldsmith, London): East Africa
Keynote lecture (also the annual ‘War in History’ public lecture): Bill Nasson (Stellenbosch
University): ‘Dominion with a Difference: South Africa and the Great War.’
4.3.2. ‘The Falklands/ Malvinas War of 1982: Experiences and Legacy’ (6 February
2014, 2-6pm). Jointly organized with the Centre for War Studies, UCD.
Aaron Donaghy (UCD), ‘The British Government and the Falkland Islands, 1974-1979’
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Ezekiel Mercau (UCD/Copenhagen), ‘The Falklands War: Imperial Atavism.'
Jimmy Burns (journalist & independent scholar): ‘The Falklands War: View from the Front.’
4.3.3. ‘From Sarajevo to Troy: Civilians and Siege Warfare’ (see Appendix 1).
Twelve speakers from several countries addressed this workshop on 28 February - 1 March
2014 which addressed the experience of civilians during sieges, starting with that of Sarajevo
in the 1990s and working back to classical antiquity (Troy). An average of 50 people attended
the four sessions. Professor Hans Van Wees (University College London) gave the keynote
address: ‘The Fate of Troy: Siege and Genocide in Ancient Warfare.’ A publication is in
preparation. For the programme, see Appendix 1 below.
4.4. Conference: ‘The Academic World in the Era of the Great War’ (see Appendix 2).
Dr Tomás Irish, together with Marie-Eve Chagnon (Université de Montréal), organized the
Centre’s and the university’s major contribution to the international commemorations of the
centenary of the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, on the above topic, 14-16 August
2014. Twenty speakers from institutions in ten different countries addressed the conference
on the role of universities, scholars, and different disciplines in the course of the First World
War and its legacy. The conference was formally opened by the Provost of TCD, Dr. Patrick
Prendergast, and the keynote address was given by Prof. Martha Hanna (University of
Colorado, Boulder), on ‘Practical Reason: The Mobilization of McGill University's Medical
Faculty, 1914 - 1918.’ An edited volume arising from the conference is currently in
development.
4.5. Other events: book launch (21 January 2014): Patricia Clavin (University of Oxford)
launched Julia Eichenberg & Paul Newman (eds.), The Great War and Veterans’
Internationalism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, see publications below).
5. Research projects.
5.1. History of Trinity College Dublin in the era of the Great War and Irish Revolution.
Dr Tomás Irish completed the second year of his postdoctoral fellowship charged with
writing a history of the College during the period of the First World War and Irish
Revolution. In the second year Dr. Irish completed the manuscript and secured a commitment
from the Royal Irish Academy Press to publish the monograph, which is due to appear in
October 2015.
5.2. HERA project: ‘Making War, Mapping Europe: Militarized Cultural Encounters,
1790-1920.’
The Centre’s input, which studies the ways in which military expeditions in the long 19th
century engendered cultural encounters between western European armies and civilian
populations in southern and eastern Europe and in the Near East (Egypt, Palestine and the
Ottoman Empire), consists of two discrete themes that ‘book end’ the entire project. The first,
led by Dr Joseph Clarke, examines French expeditionary forces in Italy and Egypt in the later
1790s and early 1800s. The second, led by myself, looks at the British and French armies in
the Dardanelles and Macedonia (1915-1919) and the British military occupation of
Jerusalem, 1917-1920. The first of two postdoctoral fellows, Dr Fergus Robson, was
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appointed for a two-year period from January 2014 to work with Dr Joseph Clarke on the first
theme. The second will be appointed in the course of 2015 to work with Professor Horne in
the final year of the project (2015-16). The consortium held a planning meeting at the Free
University, Berlin, on 24-25 January, and in pursuit of a decision to foster bilateral contacts
as the project develops, Dr Catriona Kennedy (York University) gave a paper in the Centre’s
seminar series on 3 April 2014.
6. Publications.
Members’ publications are listed on the Centre’s website. However, I draw attention here to
the continued publication of works that arise directly from the activities of the Centre.
Julia Eichenberg and Paul Newman (eds.), The Great War and Veterans’ Internationalism
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 233, arose from a conference organized by the
Centre in 2010 in conjunction with our sister centre in UCD and funded by EURHISTXX, a
research consortium to which the Centre is affiliated.
Alan Kramer and Bettina Greiner (eds.). Welt der Lager. Zur “Erfolgsgeschichte” einer
Institution (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2013), pp. 359, came out of a research project that
was initially located in the Centre and funded by the Irish Research Council for the
Humanities and Social Sciences.
------------------------------------ * --------------------------------------John Horne
Professor of Modern European History
and Director of the Centre for War Studies,
Department of History,
College.
Tel: (+353.1.896) 1011
Email: jhorne@tcd.ie
16th January 2015
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APPENDIX I: WORKSHOP ON CIVILIANS UNDER SIEGE WARFARE.
From Sarajevo to Troy: Civilians under Siege
A workshop organised by Alex Dowdall, Dr. Ciska Neyts and Prof. John Horne
for the Centre for War Studies and the Long Room Hub
Neil-Hoey Theatre, Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin, 28 Feb. – 1 Mar. 2014
Sieges have been a continual feature of warfare since the 'founding epic' of western literature, the Iliad, and
continuing up to Sarajevo in the 1990s. This type of engagement has regularly placed non-combatants at the
heart of military action. Rather than focusing on sieges in merely tactical terms, this workshop aims to examine
the various physical, social, and cultural effects of sieges on urban civilian populations. Beginning with the
Siege of Sarajevo and working backwards, the workshop’s structure aims to counteract teleological
interpretations. Major themes to be explored include the 'blurring' of the lines between combatants and noncombatants, 'everyday life' under siege, sieges as sites of particularly acute inter-religious or inter-ethnic
violence, the codification of laws and 'customs' of siege warfare, as well as the long term social, cultural and
economic repercussions of sieges on urban populations.
Friday, 28 February 2014
13.30-15.00: Panel Session 1: Civilians under Siege in 20 th Century Europe (chair: Dr. Balázs Apor)
Dr. Stef Jansen, University of Manchester
Struggles for 'normal lives' in besieged Sarajevo
Alexandra Wachter, Queen Mary, University of London
Between myth and trauma – survivors of the Siege of Leningrad (1941-1944) and
the “truth about the blockade”
15.15-15.30: Selma Harrington, Griffith College Dublin, ‘The Sarajevo Siege Exhibition: Piecing the
Puzzle, Re-Living the Experience’
This presentation will showcase the work of the GCD Group MA Interior Architecture student’s
project in cooperation with the History Museum of Bosnia-Herzegovina on the exhibition ‘The Siege
of Sarajevo’
15.30-17.00: Panel Session 2: Civilians in ‘Non-Traditional’ Siege Warfare (chair: Prof. Alan Kramer)
Alex Dowdall, Trinity College Dublin
Civilians under siege during the First World War
Emilie Dosquet, Université de Paris I
From siege warfare to ‘guerre de partis’: the desolation of the Palatinate between
military violence and laws of war
17.30-19.00
Keynote Session
Prof. Hans Van Wees, University College London
The fate of Troy: siege and genocide in ancient Greek warfare
Respondent: Dr. Philip De Souza, University College Dublin
Saturday, 1 March 2014
9.15-10.45: Panel Session 3: Mayhem and Murder in Early Modern and Medieval Sieges (chair: Prof.
Terry Barry)
Dr. Ciska Neyts, Hertford College, University of Oxford
Reciprocity and retaliation in early modern Irish and European sieges
Kimberly Cowan, Hertford College, University of Oxford
Pillage, burn and massacre: necessary evils of twelfth-century castle-warfare
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11.15-12.45: Panel Session 4: Civilians under Siege in the Mediterranean and Near East (chair: Dr. Joseph
Clarke)
Dr. Alan Murray, University of Leeds
A race against time - a fight to the death: combatants and civilians in the crusader
capture of Jerusalem (1099)
Joshua Hall, University of Cardiff
Gods Under Siege: sanctuaries and civilians in Greek sieges
12.45-13.00: Closing remarks (Prof. John Horne, Trinity College Dublin)
TCD: CWS: Director’s Report: 2013-2014
APPENDIX 2: INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON UNIVERSITIES IN THE ERA OF THE
FIRST WORLD WAR.
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Thursday,14 August.
15.00-16.00: Registration (Reception area of the Trinity Long Room Hub)
16.15-18.00
II: Mobilizing Intellect from East to West
Chair/Respondent: Alan Kramer (TCD)
Andrew Barros, (UQAM) Echoes, Reverberations and Dissonances: The Mobilization, Remobilization, and
Demobilization of History from East to West (Germany, France, Britain, and the United States), 1914-1919
Gabriela A. Frei, (Oxford) International Law and the Great War. A Discipline in the Crossfire of Critique.
Sakiko Kaiga, (KCL) A Forlorn Hope of Peace: Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, an Intellectual Father of the
League of Nations, 1914-1918.
18.00-20.00: Reception and opening address by Dr. Patrick J. Prendergast, Provost, TCD. The reception will
take place in The Ideas Space, Trinity Long Room Hub (level 2)
Friday 15 August
9.00 -10.45
I: Institutional Experiences in a World at War
Chair/Respondent: Robert Gerwarth, (UCD)
Andreas Golob, (Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz): Propagandistic Popularization and Pure Scholarship. Graz
University professors as lecturers of the university-extension movement and academic teachers.
Alexander Dmitriev, (Moscow Higher School of Economics): National School, Junior Faculty and Academic
Self-Assertion: Russian Scholars and Educational Reforms during Great War
Tomás Irish, (Trinity College Dublin): Trinity College Dublin and the Academic World during the First World
War
11.00-12.45
III. Making a better World? The Social Sciences face a global conflict
Chair/Respondent: John Horne (TCD)
Andrew M. Johnston, (Carleton University): American Sociologists and international Sociology during the First
World War.
Brian M. Foster, (Mount Saint Vincent University): The Birth of Non-State International Expert: American
Social Science and Preparations for Peace after the Great War.
Christina Theodosiou, (Université Paris-1): The influence of the Great War on Waldemar Deonna’s work
14.00-15.45
IV. Between the Nation-State and the Universe: Natural Science at War
Chair/Respondent: Roy MacLeod (University of Sydney)
Heather Ellis, (Liverpool Hope): British Science in War: Measuring and Reshaping British Manhood, 19141919.
Kenneth Bertrams, (Université Libre de Bruxelles): Politics of Nature: World War I and the Solvay Conferences
on Physics and Chemistry, 1911-1926.
Marie-Eve Chagnon, (Université de Montréal) : The End of Scientific Internationalism. The Process of
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Demobilisation of the International Scientific Community (1917-1924).
16.00-17.45
Keynote speaker: Martha Hanna, (University of Colorado, Boulder): Practical Reason: The Mobilization of
McGill University's Medical Faculty, 1914 - 1918.
Saturday 16 August
9.30-10.45
V: Identity and Gender Politics of a World at War :
Chair/Respondent: Martha Hanna (University of Colorado)
Norman Ingram, (Concordia University): Women's History, Feminist History, Gendered History? Feminist
Pacifism and the Paradoxes of the Great War in France
Philippa Read, (University of Leeds): "Without Scruple": The Enfant de l’ennemi Debate in First World War
France.
11.00-12.45
VI: Scholarly Networks in War and Peace:
Chair/Respondent: Gearóid Barry (NUIG)
Charlotte A. Lerg, (Ludwig-Maximilliams-Universität München): Fractions of Academic Identity: The German
"Propaganda Professors" on the American Campus and Beyond
Aoife O’Gorman, (Oxford): Boche Barbarism: The depiction of Germany in the Oxford Pamphlets (1914-15).
Tara Windsor, (Wuppertal): Studying (with) the Former Enemy: Anglo-German Academic Exchange after the
Great War.
14.00-15.45
VII: Cultural Demobilization and the Aftermath of the Great War:
Chair/Respondent: Norman Ingram (Concordia)
Elisabeth Piller, (Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) : “Can the Science of the World
Allow this?” –German Academic Distress, Foreign Aid and International Relations, 1919-24.
Julia Roos, (Indiana University): International Debates over Atrocity Propaganda in the Aftermath of the Great
War: A Contribution to Cultural Demobilization?
Mona Siegel, (California State University): Negotiated Truth: The Franco-German Historians Agreement of
1951 and the Long History of Cultural Demobilization after the First World War.
16.00-17.45
VIII: Roundtable Discussion
Andrew Barros (UQAM); John Horne (TCD); Roy MacLeod (Sydney)
17.45-18.00
Concluding Remarks: John Horne