GLOBAL HISTORY & CULTURE CENTRE

MEETING - TUESDAY 26TH JUNE 2007 1.00pm

Present:Maxine Berg,Giorgio Riello, David Arnold, Anne Gerritsen,

Sarah Hodges ,Luca Mola , Gad Heuman , Carolyn Marshall

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General

Maxine opened the meeting by welcoming Carolyn Marshall as the Centre’s new Administrator and offered congratulations to David Arnold on his award from the Economic and Social Research Council for a project starting in October 2007 looking at "Everyday Technology in Monsoon Asia, 1880-1960". David has also obtained a Fellowship to spend time in Chicago in 2008/09

  1. Termly Meeting

Maxine proposed a termly meeting of the members of GHCC in week 3 on Wednesday

1.00-2.00pm in the Centre’s office ( at present H413 but from October tba)

  1. Global History Seminars & Reading Groups

There was a recap of the successful events that the Centre has been involved in over the last 6 months since its inauguration. Articles are due to appear in the Alumni magazine and Communicate about the Indian Textiles event.

  • Opening Conference at the Palazzo in Venice-January 11-12th 2007 - History’s Global Conversations
  • Global Arts Network “ Creativity and innovation –theories of divergence and cross cultural connection – Warwick 26th January 2007
  • Colonialism and Global Governance – Warwick– 1st May 2007
  • Global Conversation – Warwick– 3rd May 2007
  • India : The Global City – Warwick– 11th May 2007
  • Global Arts : East meets West-AshmoleanMuseum– 25th May 2007
  • Global Cultures of Indian Textiles – V & A – 1st June 2007
  • Ceramics Day – Waddesdon Manor – 22nd June 2007

Maxine thanked Giorgio for his assistance in the organisation of many of these events and for creating the Global Centre website.

  1. Mailing Lists

There was a request for all members to let Carolyn have names, contact details and specialisms of anyone they think may be interested in the Global Centre so that we can compile a mailing list for future events. Also details of any publications that have a global relevance so that we can start an online back catalogue.

  1. Forthcoming Events

Global History Seminars will be held in weeks 3 & 5 and the following speakers have been lined up in the first term

17th October -Jan de Vries

31st October - David Washbrook

Requests were made for suggestions on speakers for the 2nd term particularly on China. Anne Gerritsen to investigate. Maxine to ask Bartolome Yun Casalila to one meeting. We could also hold a reading group.

One new book – John Darwin - After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire was suggested as a topic for discussion

13th – 16th December – Anne Gerritsen is organising a specialist China conference and is hoping to use the GHCC mailing list for advertising to create connections. Contributors will be coming from USA, mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore. Members are encouraged to attend to support the project. Anne has also secured a Fellowship to spend time in Singapore next year.

Anne Smart-Martin – an Atlantic world specialist- will be at Warwick at some point during next year and Maxine would like to arrange a seminar /workshop to take advantage of this.

Maxine is also keen develop a workshop with Claudia Stein on the transmission of knowledge, and is looking at a China Conference as a possibility for 2008.

  1. Advisory Board & Membership

Our Constitution states that we can have a Management Committee which should meet once a year without being too formalised. It should include:-

Chair Centre Director -Maxine Berg

Dept HeadChair of History-Margot Finn

Faculty of Arts RepTBA Karen O’Brien ( suggested)

Non Faculty RepsTBASean Breslin ( suggested)

Bishnupria Gupta ( suggested)

Claire Anderson ( suggested)

External MembersTBABin Wong , UCLA ( suggested)

David Washbrook ( suggested)

It was suggested that the meeting takes place before the Global Conversations Day perhaps with an off-campus dinner.

David Arnold announced 2 new appointments in Sociology who may become involved in the activities of the Centre :-

Claire Anderson – specialising in the Indian Ocean, slaves and convicts

Gurmindra Bhandra – historical sociology

Maxine advised we need to raise our web profile and see if we can get on the main Warwick webpage and also have a separate listing as a Research Centre. CM to investigate.

  1. Venice Conference – 11th-12th January 2008

Rebecca Earle is co-ordinating this as the theme is Culinary Cultures after the Columbian Exchange. Funding is currently being researched by the Development Office to try to get food industry sponsors. At present there are a number of speakers such as Sara Pennell, Emma Spary coming for one day as the cost of hiring the Palazzo is £500 per day. There is the opportunity to extend it to 2 days .

The Centre would like to invite the graduate students but Global Centre members should raise their own travel funding. The contribution towards accommodation from the GHCC will be around £3,000, the rest from the Development Office. The Editor of the Journal of the History of Food , Alan Grieco has offered the possibility of 1000 euros funding.

Those present were asked to look ahead and make suggestions for themes for future annual conferences .

  1. Budgets

We have an underspend this year and are investigating whether we can use this towards expenses for the Venice Conference next year.

  1. Reports and Online discussions

Members should e-mail short reports on events to Carolyn to go onto the website along with any links and abstracts. David Arnold mentioned the problems of plagiarism in connection with online papers.

9.Other Matters

David Arnold raised the difficult issue of area studies as the BritishAcademy has set up committees for specific areas. Further discussion is required on this and Maxine will arrange a separate meeting. We need to look at how other global centres deal with this such as UCLA.

Immediate action that can be taken is to create a webpage to detail the specialisms of GHCC members in China and Asia and make the BritishAcademy aware of these.

We need to promote other Global Conferences such as “World Order” in Dresden .

Any other initiatives need to be logged on a spreadsheet of plans for the Centre and we need to engage other disciplines such as the Art Historians

The GHCC at Warwick needs to be put on the map with possibly a larger Global Conference or dialogue with the BritishAcademy with a high profile panel.

Sarah enquired about the MA in Global History. This is not running for 2007/08 but some components are in place and it will probably be up and running the following year. Anne mentioned she has a student interested and we need to encourage this interest.

No news yet on our location for 2007/08- to be advised.CM 26/06/07