Liz Egan, Jim Hulbert, and Catriona Sharples report on the workshop ‘New Frontiers in Imperial Networks’, focused particularly on the place of “networks” in our study of imperialism and colonialism

In 2022, Warwick’s Global History and Culture Centre celebrated its 15th anniversary. Founded in 2007 by Professor Maxine Berg, GHCC was the first research centre dedicated to the field of global history to be established in the UK, and quickly took on a leading role in developing the methodology and practice of this sub-discipline. In this first blog post of 2023, GHCC Director Guido van Meersbergen looks back on some of the principal recent developments in the Centre's activities, and ahead towards key initiatives planned for the coming year.

On Friday 7 June 2019 the last of three V&A Salons took place as part of the AHRC-funded Global Microhistory network, with the theme of 'Information, Writing, and Cultures of Correspondence'. Organised by Maxine Berg along with Warwick-colleagues Jo Tierney and Guido van Meersbergen, this third salon session took place at the V&A stores at Blythe House, London, under guidance of the V&A's curator of South Asian textiles, Avalon Fotheringham. In this blog post, Guido van Meersbergen reports on the event accompanied with a slide show of spectacular photos by Adrianna Catena.

The AHRC Network: A New Global Microhistory Pathway (Warwick, Oxford, EUI and V&A) held the second of three late evening public discussions in ‘The Globe’ at the V&A on Friday 8 March 2019. Organised by professor Maxine Berg and focused on the theme 'Diplomacy and Gifts', this event brought together curators and (art) historians on a spectacular tour of the museum's South Asian, Islamic Middle East, and Medieval & Renaissance Galleries. The evening was concluded by way of a roundtable discussion in the 'Globe' space in the Europe 1600-1815 gallery, a recording of which can be found here.

The AHRC Network: A New Global Microhistory Pathway (Warwick, Oxford, EUI and V&A) held the first of three late evening public discussions in ‘The Globe’ at the V&A on Friday 19 October 2018. Organised by professor Maxine Berg, this event brought together a new generation of historians and curators to participate in a public discussion of the microhistories and material cultures that objects, from treasure chests to tea sets, in the Europe Gallery open. A recording of the discussion can now be found here.

Although we are well aware that climate-induced disasters are bound to occur, British historian Geoffrey Parker argues in Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth CenturyLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window , ‘we still convince ourselves that they will not happen just yet (or, at least, not to us), and so fail to take appropriate action.’ Parker’s unnerving account of policymakers always remaining ‘one disaster behind’ is as topical now as it was when his analysis of the seventeenth-century "Little Ice Age" Link opens in a new windowwas first published in 2013. On Wednesday 22 November 2017, the GHCC’s Global History Reading Group convened to discuss selected sections from Parker’s revised edition, published in July 2017. Adrianna Catena and Guido van Meersbergen report on what was a lively and instructive meeting.

When Jeremy Adelman (Princeton University) published his internet essay What is Global History Now? in March 2017, it featured the ominous subtitle ‘Is global history still possible or has it had its moment?’. Yet unlike what some commentators assumed, Adelman's intention had never been to announce The End of Global History. Quite the opposite. On 1 November 2017, Professor Adelman joined Warwick's Global History Reading Group for a discussion of his thought piece. In this first blog post on the new Global History and Culture Centre Blog, Dr Guillemette Crouzet and Dr Guido van Meersbergen reflect on Adelman’s timely intervention.