CfP: Seas of Change: Indian Ocean Mobilities at the End of Empire

15. März 2025
Call for papers

The Fifth Annual Pierre du Bois Doctoral Workshop, organized by the Geneva Graduate Institute in partnership with the Pierre du Bois Foundation, will take place at Maison de la Paix on 5–6 June 2025. It aims to bring together PhD researchers and early career scholars working on histories of Indian Ocean mobilities in the mid- and late twentieth centuries. The objective of the workshop is to follow mobile lives at a time when multiple colonies across the Indian Ocean rim emerged as independent states, and explore how our understandings of this region can be enriched by bringing together histories of decolonization and histories of mobility.

In the twentieth century, when logics of settlement and statehood seemed to prevail, legacies of mobility, circulation, and cosmopolitan lives continued to unsettle attempts at territorial fixation. Turning their gaze towards the Indian Ocean, historians have observed how both colonial-metropolitan and “intercolonial” mobilities were transformed in this period. With the rise of new nation-states, long-standing diasporic networks were constantly renegotiated across the Indian Ocean while memories of circular migration were never quite buried. These mobilities were both fragmented and reinforced by the transformations in statehood that occurred across the ocean, especially as mid-twentieth century wars, strategic alliances and anti-colonial struggles shaped the region. Highlighting the history of these mobilities helps us further revise our understandings of twentieth-century decolonization. Therefore, in this workshop, we turn to histories of mobilities which are deeply entangled with histories of decolonization.

The goal of this workshop is to consider how recent histories of decolonization can be enriched by a focus on Indian Ocean mobilities and immobilities in the twentieth century. In this moment of violent ruptures and separations, what forms of mobility and diaspora persisted and prevailed? How do we imagine histories of oceans beyond its representation as a natural separator/border? How does a focus on mobility alter our dominant perceptions of space and time and what new periodisations of the twentieth century emerge as a result? These questions point to the relevance of studies that highlight issues of citizenship, belonging, minorities, borders, deportation, settlement, memory, race, interspecies encounters and more. In discussing these issues, this workshop seeks to open up new horizons on the period by exploring the messy, tangled, and incomplete nature of decolonization, emphasizing the elusive and even “mundane” aspects of these mid-century upheavals.

We invite applicants to submit papers on the following themes and related topics:

- mid and late-twentieth histories of citizenship, identity and belonging
- minorities and diasporas
- migration patterns and policies
- mobilities and immobilities
- border-drawing practices, partition(s)
- displacements, deportations and population exchanges
- Indian Ocean histories of race
- history of memory
- interspecies encounters across the Indian Ocean

Application Process

Please submit a 250-word abstract and your current position with university affiliation to seasofchange2025@gmail.com by March 15, 2025.

There is limited financial assistance available for students travelling from outside Switzerland. Please state on the application whether you already have travel/conference funding available so we can better allocate it.

We particularly welcome PhD students and early career scholars.

 

Organisiert von
Geneva Graduate Institute / Pierre du Bois Foundation

Veranstaltungsort

Maison de la Paix
1202 
Geneva
Sprachen der Veranstaltung
Englisch

Kosten

CHF 0.00