A century after the First World War, this conference wants to reflect on international relations and entanglements during the global conflict. The conference wants to challenge Eurocentric views and focus on the transnational and global face of the war. The conference will still deal with European theatres of war and inter-European entanglements.
The aim is to bring together an international group of scholars working on transnational and international fields and aspects of the war, such as diplomacy, rivalry between war partners, secret diplomacy or commemoration.
If you want to attend the conference, please register via email (global.war.conference@gmail.com) until 30th January 2018.
Programme
Wednesday, January 31
08:40: Registration (University of Zurich, Main Building, Room KOL-F-104, first floor) / Conference Opening by Thomas Schmutz and Gwendal Piégais
09:15 – Panel I: Global Connections in Wartime.
Chair: Dr. Konstantinos Karatzas (Research Fellow, Institute of International Economic Relations, Greece; London Center for Interdisciplinary Research)
• Dr. Martin Deuerlein (University of Tübingen): Global War, International Relations and the Question of Order in an Interdependent World
• Dr. Steve Marti (Independent Scholar, Ontario, Canada): Dominion Over Empire: Race and Recruitment in Britain’s Settler Colonies
• Dr. Francesca Piana (University of Zurich): An Endless War: Performing Gender in International Relief, 1914-1923
• Dr. Daniel Palmieri (Red Cross Archive, Geneva): Humanitarianism in Global War: The International Committee of the Red Cross in WWI
Young Researcher Presentation: Adam Ohnesorge (University of Zurich): The forgotten civilian prisoners and Swiss peace mission in Corsica during the Great War
11:45 – Panel II: A question of perspective – Soundscapes and Time Frames.
• Dr. Yaron Jean (Sapir College, Negev, Israel): The Sounds of the Invisible: Warfare Technology, Obliteration and Global Wars
• Sarah Laufs (Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf): Rethinking the Time-Frames of the Great War – Ruptures, Continuities and German Wartime Experiences
12:20 Lunch
13:40 – Panel III: Global Switzerland.
Chair: Dr. Adrian Hänni (Distance Learning University of Switzerland)
• Dr. Peter Fleer (Swiss Federal Archives Berne): Archives and Issues of the First World War – Doing Research in the Swiss Federal Archives
• PD Dr. Daniel Marc Segesser (University of Bern): From Bregenz via Turkestan to Solothurn: Military Migration in the First World War in transnational Perspective
• Dr. Michael Olsansky (MILAK ETH): Between Military Diplomacy and Transnational Military Exchange: Swiss Officers in the Theaters of War of the First World War
• Nina Flurina Caprez (University of Fribourg): “When peace was difficult” – What the history of a monastery tells about World War I and its aftermath
15:50 – Panel IV: Migration in Wartime.
Chair: Dr. Jonathan Krause (Oxford)
• Prof. Dr. Christian Koller (University of Zurich; Sozialarchiv): Intercontinental War Migration of French and British Colonial Troops
• Maria Ines Tato (CONICET – University of Buenos Aires – RavignaniInstitute / Superior School of War – Faculty of the Army – University of National Defense): Transnational solidarities: Immigrant communities in Argentina facing the Great War
• Dr. Konstantinos Karatzas (Research Fellow, Institute of International Economic Relations, Greece; London Center for Interdisciplinary Research): The Greek perspective: Migration, Imperial Dreams and TragedyDr.
• Shuang Wen (National University of Singapur): From Moral to Morale: The YMCA and the Chinese-Arab Laboureres in WWI
17:20 Break and Swiss Dinner
18:45 Keynote and Roundtable (History of Violence) – UZH Main Building, Room F-101
Opening Remarks by Dean Prof. Dr. Klaus Jonas (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Zurich)
19:00 Keynote I Prof. Dr. Christian Gerlach (University of Bern): World War I within a global history of mass violence in the first third of the 20th century
19. 45 Roundtable. Chair: Prof. Dr. Philip Dwyer (Director of the Centre for the History of Violence at the University of Newcastle, Australia): Mass Violence in the Beginning of the 20th century with Prof. Dr. Annette Becker (University of Nanterre, Paris), Prof. Dr. Christian Gerlach (University of Bern), Prof. Dr. Hans-Lukas Kieser (University of Newcastle, Australia, and Zurich), Dr. Mark Jones (University College Dublin, Centre for War Studies)
Thursday, February 1
8:30 – Registration. Main building (KOL-F-117)
8:45 – Panel V: Networks, Intelligence and Secret Diplomacy.
Chair: Dr. Adrian Hänni (Distance Learning University of Switzerland)
• Matthew Kovac (University of Oxford): Traitors to the Crown: British Military Veterans in the IRA, 1918-1923
• Samuel Krug (FU Berlin): A global network for a global revolution? Transnational connections of German WWI propaganda
• Dr. Christian Stachelbeck (Zentrum für Militärgeschichte und Sozialwissenschaften der Bundeswehr): Shadowman or Bureaucrat in uniform – Walter Nicolai and the German military intelligence service in WWI
• Jacopo Lorenzini (Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici, Naples): Military élites go to war: Italy and Europe
10:50 – Panel VI: Alliance, Loyalty and Intervention.
Chair: Dr. Gabriela Frei (Oxford)
• Dr. William Thomas Allison (Georgia Southern University, USA): With Arms or Food? A Local View on the American Decision to Intervene in North Russia, 1918
• Dr. Takuma Melber (University of Heidelberg): « Alle Menschen werden Brüder » – German soldiers in Japanese war captivity and the First World War in Far East
• Sam Klein (University of St. Andrews): Coalition Politics and the Preparations for the Coup de Grâce
• Tomáš Kykal (Military History Institute, Prague): Conflict of Conscience and Duty – Czechs in the First World War
• Aliaksandr Piahanau (University of Toulouse): A separate peace with Hungary? The Magyar peace feelers at the beginning of WWI (1914-1915)
12:00 Lunch
13:30 – Panel VII: Transnational commemoration.
Chair: Dr. Daniel Marc Segesser (University of Bern)
• Karla Vanraepenbusch (Université catholique de Louvain): Le Mémorial interallié, un ‘mémorial de la paix’ qui exprime cependant un refus de démobiliser les esprits)
• Stefan Kurz (HGM, University of Vienna): A common museum for a common army beyond the nation? The ‘k.u.k. Heeresmuseum’ in Vienna and its claim to represent a supranational Austro-Hungarian view on the First World War
• Prof. Dr. Georgi Verbeeck (Maastricht University): Remembering the First World War in Belgium – From National to Global Perspectives.
• Anna Isaieva (Warsaw): Visual representation of colonial troops in British and French commemoration projects of the Centennial of the Great War.
• Mateusz Mazzini (Polish Academy of Sciences): The 100 years of Today. Poland`s WWI commemorations and the meta-memory of independence.
15:50 – Keynote II: Prof. Dr. Maartje Abbenhuis (University of Auckland): Global war, global Switzerland: Neutrals at the heart of the First World War – KOL-F-101
17:00 – Panel: Neutrality and Diplomacy in the Global War.
Chair: Dr. Philip Dwyer (University of Newcastle)
• Dr. Michael Auwers (University of Antwerpen): Away with Neutrality. The ‘Colonial’ Coup of Belgian Diplomacy during the First World War
• Elisabeth Marie Piller (Norwegian University of Science and Technology): The Great War and the Power of Neutrality: The Commission for Relief in Belgium and the Global Public ‘Conscience’
• Annalise Higgins (Trinity College, Cambridge): The international status of interoceanic canals after the First World War
18:40 – Keynote III: Prof. Dr. Harald Fischer-Tiné (ETH Zurich): Cheering up Soldiers, educating Civilians: The transnational Activities of the Indian YMCA during the Great War(1914-1920)
19:30 Conference dinner (optional) in the Old Town
Friday, February 2
9:00 – Main building (KOL-F-117)
Keynote IV: Prof. Dr. Annette Becker (Université de Paris Nanterre): The Ordeal of Civilians in a Globalized World
10:00 – Panel IX: Religion and Diplomacy.
Chair: Dr. Gleb Albert (University of Zurich)
• Christoph Valentin (University of Münster): Between humanitarianism and own political interests. The politics of the Holy See during the First World War
• Dr. Maik Schmerbauch (University of Frankfurt): The Catholic Church and the German Revolution 1918-1919 in the view of the catholic press
• Joanna Simonow (ETH Zurich): Missionary Networks and the Global Response to Famine in India in the Wake of the First World War, c.1918-1925
• Dr. Martin Arndt (University of Zagreb): Jews between the Frontlines
11:20 – Panel X: From War to peace.
Chair: Dr. Steve Marti (Ontario, Canada)
• Dr. Jasper M. Trautsch (University of Regensburg): The Significance of the First World War for the Conceptual History of the West
• Lukasz Mieszkowski (Imre Kertesz Kolleg Jena): A Foreign Lady – The Polish Episode in the influenza pandemic of 1918.
• Radhika Singha (Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi): Terminating the war, conserving its trace: India 1918 – 1921.
• Dr. Ángel Alcalde (Center for the History of Global Development, Shanghai University): War Veterans as transnational actors – Veterans “Internationalisms” after World War I.
• Michaela Oberreiter (University of Vienna): The state structure of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic and the Austrian legal heritage
12:40 Lunch at Cafeteria of the University
14:00 – Keynote V: Prof. Dr. Hans-Lukas Kieser (University of Newcastle and Zurich): “Istanbul in the 1910s: A central hub of diplomacy and global conflict”
15:00 – Panel XI: The Global Middle East – From Sideshow to Violent Epicenter.
Chair: Prof. Dr. Hans-Lukas Kieser (University of Newcastle and Zurich)
• Remzi Cagatay Cakirlar (Leiden University): Édouard Herriot, a vanguard French Radical endorsing the Young Turks’ cause at the Dawn of the Great War.
• Dr. Jonathan Krause (Oxford): The Global Anticolonial Backlash, 1916-17.
• Carl-Leo Graf von Hohenthal (University of Freiburg): Ireland in Palestine? Jews, Arabs, Britons and new perspectives on the fight for the future of Mandate Palestine.
• Simona Berhe (University of Milan): From Colonial War to World War – Lybia during the First World War.
• Sebastian Willert (TU Berlin): Cultural Imperialism versus Protectionism? On the role of the Deutsch-türkische Denkmalschutz-Kommando during the First World War.
17:10 – Panel XII: A New Order – International Law and International Relations.
Chair: Dr. Michael Auwers (University of Antwerpen)
• Arno Barth (Germany, Independent): „Nothing should be left to chance“ – Regulatory Models of Western Peace Planning.
• Dr. Aimé Raoul Sumo Tayo (Université de Yaoundé I, Cameroun): Finir un conflit: les modalités de sortie de guerre en Afrique pendant la Première Guerre Mondiale.
• Dr. Jan Pajor (University of Lodz): The United States and China’s entry into WWI.
• Prof. Dr. Michael Neiberg (US Army War College): America’s Road to War, 1914-1917.
Final Comments and Discussion.
Optional dinner in the Old Town with city tour