Previous Congresses

Previous Congresses

Previous Congresses

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Every three years ENIUGH convenes the European Congress in World and Global History. Since the inaugural congress in 2005 it has developed into an outstanding meeting place for scholars in the fast developing fields of world, global and transnational history and the adjacent disciplines. The number of participants has increased steadily, and the success of the congress can be explained, among other factors, by its openness both to young and experienced scholars alike. The congress has become a forum for researchers to present and discuss their latest findings as well as to inform each other about new organisational patterns in the fields of teaching and research. It offers information and expertise on undergraduate and graduate teaching as well as PhD-programmes and provides the opportunity to develop emerging research agendas in transnational teams and to get the latest news about European and various national funding schemes. A book exhibition, a presentation of teaching programmes and a variety of social events accompany the scientific programme. ENIUGH is constantly striving to create an intellectually inspiring environment for its congresses in cooperation with local partners.

  • The Hague 2023
  • Turku 2021
  • Budapest 2017
  • Paris 2014
  • London 2011
  • Dresden 2008
  • Leipzig 2005

    • The Hague 2023

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    The Seventh European Congress on World and Global History was hosted by Leiden University on its campus in The Hague, UN City of Peace and Justice, from 29 June to 1 July 2023. Taking inspiration from its hosting location, the congress explored the main theme of “Conflict and Inequity, Peace and Justice: Local, Regional and International Perspectives” and was dedicated to discussing structural and specific causes of conflict and inequity as well as the corollary features of various quests for peace and justice. By exploring these causes and quests on the local, regional, transregional, and global scale, more than 250 international researchers in 64 panels shed light on how the dynamics of conflicts and struggles for peace have shaped the lives of peoples and the development of sociopolitical orders in all historical periods and around the globe. Combining insights from diverse disciplines and scholarly traditions, the congress thus contributed to a better understanding of the challenges and potentials of ongoing global transformations and all their political, social, economic, and cultural repercussions.

    In addition to these multi-faceted and in-depth presentation by scholars from all over the world, the conference highlighted specific views from The Hague as a centre of multilateralism, internationalism(s) and as a UN city in a time of crises. Researchers of the hosting institution, Leiden University, presented their thoughts and findings on “Citizen Diplomacy, New Diplomatic History, and Questions of Historical Agency” as well as on “The Pasts, Presents and Futures of Multilateralism” and deliberated new directions and possibilities for the field of Global History in the Closing Roundtable “Global History. Looking to the Future”. Please find the complete programme here.

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    Turku 2021

    The Sixth ENIUGH Congress was originally to take place in June 2020 in Turku, Finland, hosted and organized by Åbo Akademi University. By virtue of the global spread of Covid-19 at the beginning of 2020, the ENIUGH Steering and Organising Committees in Leipzig and Turku decided to postpone the congress for a year. Building on the experience of new format in which scientific exchange has taken place since the outbreak of the pandemic, the congress finally took place online from 15 June to 19 June 2021. The first four days covered the official panel program with online sessions and discussions. On the last day, June 19th, all the impressions from the congress days before were ventilated.

    Under the theme “Minorities, Cultures of Integration and Patterns of Exclusion”, we sought to stimulate and discuss research on minorities and the processes of past and present minoritization as well as the resistance they engender from a global perspective. We aimed to analyse the various concepts of minority and minority positions as well as practices and narratives of inclusion, belonging, and exclusion with a focus on transnational and transregional constellations as well as comparative perspectives. Addressing the exposure to and challenge of historical and contemporary mechanisms and policies of marginalization and exclusion in their relation to past and present cultures of integration, we hoped to stimulate a reflection on the normative underpinnings of societies. With the Sixth ENIUGH Congress, we also continued to explore the relations, transfers, and entanglements between states, peoples, communities, and individuals, situated in or spanning different regions of the world in a comparative and a longue durée perspective. The common emphasis was again a commitment to transcending the confines of national and Eurocentric historiographies.
    Download a PDF version of the complete conference programme here.

    Budapest 2017

    The Fifth ENIUGH Congress took place in Budapest, hosted by both the Central European University (Department of History) and Corvinus University (Karl Polanyi Research Centre at the Institute of Sociology and Social Policy), supported by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ Research Centre for Humanities. Under the overall theme “Ruptures, Empires, Revolutions” and on the occasion of the centennial of the Russian Revolution, we discussed the global context and repercussions of the revolution in particular while debating the role of revolutions in global history in general. Added to that we explored empires and imperial forms of organisation, especially in view of how they changed and ended, and which legacies they left. Violent transformations of societies, ruptures in world orders, and wars, as well as changing international relations were addressed from transnational and transregional angles. The location of the congress was a step in mobilising a pan-European community of scholars: We are glad that our call for contributions to comparative and global perspectives on South Eastern Europe and the Middle East has resonated with the research interest of many colleagues who came to Budapest to discover the connected histories of the Hungarian capital and the wider region. Download a PDF version of the complete conference programme here.

    Paris 2014

    Under the theme “Encounters, Circulations and Conflicts” the next ENIUGH congress seeks to: – challenge the problematic opposition of centres and peripheries, which is still influential in historical research, – analyse the multitude of places and centres from where history is written and the plurality of the languages in which historical artefacts are conveyed, – stimulate a discussion on the meaning and relevance of relations, comparisons, transfers, and entanglements between states, peoples, communities, and individuals in a ‘long durée’ perspective – address the destructive effects of international and global connectivity, given the centenary of the beginning of the First World War, – and to integrate the historical interactions between man and environment, including cultural and economic processes as well as the various aspects of material and social life. Generally, our intention is to transcend the confines of national history writing. While the majority of the contributions deals with particular historical subjects, some concentrate on questions of theory and methodology. In addition to the panels in the thematic sessions, roundtables and special events offer room for joint discussions. We look forward to welcoming to Paris historians interested in transnational and global history, from European as well as from non-European countries, and representing various disciplines involved in the field, ranging from political science to archaeology, from economic to art history.   Download a PDF version of the complete conference programme here.

    London 2011

    Recent decades have seen the re-emergence and, on an unprecedented scale, the further development of various interacting strands of world, global and transnational history, all shar­ing the common aim of transcending national historiographies. Central to these intellectual enterprises has been the study of connections and compari­sons. These perspectives provide for sustained re­flection on a great variety of themes and studies. Under the framework of “Connections and Comparisons” about 100 panels presented new findings on research topics, including the following:

    • Entanglements between polities, societies, communities and individuals situated in, or spanning, different regions of the world
    • Interactions between humanity and the environ­ment, including those which developed over the very long term, through the cultural and economic histories of material and social life
    • Histories of empires, large-scale crises, interna­tional organisations, and the intercontinental sources and consequences of revolutions, whether political, technological, social or ideological
    • Exchanges on oceans as spaces of sustained interaction between communities from different continents, the experience and consequences of migration, periods of ‘de-globalisation’ and ‘globalisation’

    Not least, this included a critical reflection on the methodological and conceptual issues involved in comparative, transnational and entangled histories: both in general terms as well as in relation to specific areas of historical inquiry, from religions to real wages and from diasporas to epistemic communities. The common emphasis was a commitment to tran­scend national historiographies and explore different approaches to wide-ranging comparisons. The program of the congress can be downloaded here.

    Dresden 2008

    The second congress of European world and global historians took place in Dresden in 2008 and profited also from the large presence of world historians from Australia, China, Japan, Cameroon, Nigeria, South Africa, and the US.  With this excellent excellent opportunity arose to compare the state of the art of world and global history in different world regions. This became especially relevant as shortly before the congress representatives of the North American-based World History Association (WHA), the then recently established Asian Association of World Historians (AAWHA), together with colleagues from Africa and Latin America and from ENIUGH launched a world-wide network of organisations focusing on world and global history (NOGWHISTO). The Dresden congress was organised under the title “World Orders”, a topic which had been largely dealt with in political science, and which is very prominent in the study of international relations, while historians had made only marginal contributions or at least had not used the term so prominently. The idea of “Global Governance”, which is challenged by the idea of only one remaining superpower after 1989, has inspired historians as well to revisit the category of empire, from Rome to Washington. Some have argued that there are lessons to be learnt from the Victorian Empire, while others dispute the continuity from old fashioned European imperialism to the contemporary world order. In late 19th century imperialism, World Order was guaranteed by a potent great power (or a couple of such powers) with the ambition to control world affairs by military means and by political pressure based in economic superiority. From a global historian’s point of view this raises such questions as what exactly was ‘controlled’? What did control mean with regard to territoriality, trade routes, major resources like energy and raw materials, markets, financial institutions and so forth? This raises the further issue of when in history it makes sense to speak of a world order. Or to formulate it differently: since when do great powers dispose of the technology to control essential parts of world economy and since when have world markets and world affairs been more important than domestic markets and domestic affairs for the chances to develop societies? The opening lectures were given by Anthony G. Hopkins (Walter Prescott Webb Chair of History and Ideas at the Department of History, University of Texas at Austin) dealing with historiography’s trajectory “From Postmodernism to Globalisation” and by Bénédicte Savoy (Institute for History and Art’s History at the Technical University Berlin) giving a lecture on transnational art history under the title “’Es gibt nichts schöneres auf dem ganzen sublunarischen Erdenrunde.’ Die Kunstsammlungen Dresdens in transnationaler Perspektive”. Both addressed the current debate on globalisation and history from their respective disciplinary perspectives as specialists of British imperial history and continental history of arts, thus focusing on transnational entanglements of and within Europe from different angles. In the closing discussion Peer Vries (Vienna), Patrick O’Brien (London), Barbara Lüthi (Basel), Katja Naumann (Leipzig) and Madeleine Herren (Heidelberg) targeted crucial themes arising from the panels and expressed their general impressions about what was gained during those three days: notably that an increasing number of younger scholars are entering and strengthening the field of world and global history writing and teaching. The opening lectures can be purchased here: http://www.univerlag-leipzig.de/article.html;article_id,1185 Reports on the session are available at history.transnational, a publication of the key notes is available. The program of the congress can be downloaded here.

    Leipzig 2005

    The first congress was held in 2005 in Leipzig with about 300 participants from all over Europe and other parts of the world, meeting in almost 50 panels. Three purposes guided the three day conference:

    • giving a broad overview of the numerous efforts in various European countries, not only with respect to research questions, but also with regard to how world and global history is or should be taught at schools and universities
    • stimulating a discussion about the intellectual traditions of world history writing, which are viewed in various European countries as a positive reference or as the background for the current debates in world and global history
    • addressing fundamental methodological questions of today’s global history writing since,  especially from a European perspective, world history has to confront the long tradition of Eurocentric thinking and to explore new ways of analysing the relationship between Europe and extra-European regions, as well as reflecting on the role of Europe or its nation states in international organizations and global networks.

    The opening speeches were given by Prof. Michael Geyer (University of Chicago) and Prof. Patrick O’Brien (London School of Economics). The closing event was a round table discussion with William Clarence-Smith (SOAS London), Patrick Fridenson (EHESS Paris), Alexander Nützenadel (Universität zu Köln),  Hannes Siegrist (Universität Leipzig) and Peer Vries (Universiteit Leiden). Reports on most of the panel discussions are published in an issue of the journal “Historical Social Research” (May 2006) as well as in the online-forum ‘history.transnational’.The program and report of the congress can be downloaded here.