The History Department welcomed a number of leading international scholars to Chapel Hill for its “Global Brexit and the Lost Futures of European Empires” conference from April 4-6, 2019. Over the course of the conference, these scholars discussed the global responses of the United Kingdom’s anticipated withdrawal from the European Union, and it placed these event in historical context.
The conference was the fourth iteration of the “Lost Futures of European Empires” series initiated nearly a decade ago in partnership with King’s College London. Previous conferences in 2012, 2014, and 2016 have been held in both London and Chapel Hill. This year’s conference was co-convened by Profs. Susan Pennybacker and Cemil Aydin.
“The goal is to promote dialogue about political thought and global political culture: internationalism, nationalism, and various Pan-movements, including Pan-Asianism, Pan-Africanism, and Pan-Islamism, and to have dialogue across time periods and across empires,” Dr. Pennybacker said. “The conceit of this conference was to address Brexit as a signal that could prompt us to explore the lost futures and histories of empire.”
The Center for European Studies at UNC-CH, a Jean Monnet Center of Excellence, with assistance from the European Union Erasmus+ Programme, and US Department of Education Title VI funds, brought to Chapel Hill Jon Parry, Professor of Modern British History at the University of Cambridge; Lawrence Black, Professor of Modern History at University of York, UK; Dr. Pradip K. Datta, Professor at the Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory at the Jawaharal Nehru University, Delhi; and Dr. Sana Tannoury-Karam, Post-Doctoral Fellow in Middle East History at Rice University.
A number of other scholars from both the United States and the United Kingdom presented at the conference at the invitation of the conference’s conveners. They funded their own travel, a testament that the conference drew strong interest. Funding also came from co-sponsors, including the African Studies Center, the Carolina Asia Center, the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, Carolina Seminars, the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies, the Center for Global Initiatives, the College of Arts and Sciences (UNC-CH), the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, the Curriculum in Peace, War and Defense, the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies, the Curriculum in Global Studies, and the Office of the Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, North Carolina Central University.
The conference opened on April 4. Senior Associate Dean Rudi Colloredo-Mansfield and UNC History Department chair Lisa Lindsay greeted the keynote Global Brexit Panel that evening, which brought together an interdisciplinary group of scholars whose research interests and university affiliations span the globe: Jon Parry (modern Britain), Lawrence Black (modern Britain), and Pradip K. Datta (modern South Asia) were joined on the panel by Michael Tsin, Associate Professor of History and Earl N. Phillips Jr. Distinguished Professor in International Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill (modern China); Anne-Maria B. Makhulu, Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology and African and African American Studies at Duke University (modern Africa); and Tobias Hof, PD Dr. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munchen (modern Europe, Italy and Ethiopia).
Over the course of the next two days, conference presenters spoke on an array of related topics, including colonial settlers, imperial histories of Southeast Asia and the Caribbean, transnational religious thought, and the impact of media.
In addition, Dr. Daniel Walkowitz, Professor of History and of Social & Cultural Analysis Emeritus at New York University, spoke about his recently-published book The Remembered and Forgotten Jewish World: Jewish Heritage in Europe and the United States (Rutgers University Press, 2018). The book examines Jewish heritage sites in Europe and the United States, and it focuses on the erasure of late nineteenth and early twentieth century socialist movements from Jewish collective memory, despite their achievements in promoting workers’ rights.
The conference proved a great success. It was the largest of the four “Lost Futures of European Empires” conferences, drawing between 200 and 250 people, and presenters offered significant historical insights pertinent to present international issues. Undergraduates, graduate students, scholars, and the general public comprised the audiences. UNC-CH departments were well-represented, with more than thirty graduate students and faculty from History alone speaking and attending.