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 programme of the congress can be downloaded here.

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