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.
- AOB
There was no other business.