Partnership and Security
2004 - 2008
Common Security Forum was founded in 1991 as a network within which scholars and policy-makers could cooperate on subjects of global importance, and in a setting of continuing exchange across national, regional and disciplinary frontiers. Its activities have been coordinated in recent years at the Centre for History and Economics, King’s College, University of Cambridge. The individuals who constitute the network have moved between the worlds of scholarship, national policy, and international policy, and include scholars based in Australia, Germany, India, Japan, Montenegro, Nigeria, South Africa, Sweden, Thailand, the UK and the US.
The CSF project on international and global partnerships, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, involved three strands.
I. The UN and International History
The project built on previous work by CSF to encourage the use of the UN’s experience, memory, and archival holdings, as a resource both for historical scholarship and for policy. It was particularly concerned with the role played by UN agencies in health, education and migration. CSF has worked closely with UN archivists, including Jens Boel of UNESCO, to support and encourage younger researchers to make creative use of the UN archives. It has done this by the development of the website on UN history, coordinated by Sunil Amrith, and also through publication and meetings. CSF continued to facilitate research on international history more broadly, as in Emma Rothschild’s research on the concepts and policies of global security, and Caitlin Anderson’s work on the history of nationality and citizenship. Other participants included Ike Achebe (University of Nigeria) who was in Cambridge as Smuts Fellow in 2005-2006.
Meetings
United Nations and international history
18 June 2007
A meeting of the United Nations and international history project at the Centre for History and Economics was held on June 18 at King's College, Cambridge. The meeting discussed archival and other resources for the history of the UN and other international institutions, and new initiatives in curricula for the history of the UN and of humanitarianism. Jens Boel, the Archivist of UNESCO talked about web-based resources for UN history. The meeting was held jointly with a meeting of the advisory committee, chaired by Chris Bayly, of the UN history project of the South Asia Initiative at Harvard University. Other participants included Sugata Bose, Patricia Clavin, Tim Harper, Emma Rothschild, Glenda Sluga and Jessica Reinisch. Click for the programme. Click for a list of participants.UN/International History
16 June 2006
A small roundtable meeting, organised by Sunil Amrith, took place in Trinity College on 16 June 2006. The meeting discussed issues on the theme of the United Nations and international history; it was also concerned with a special journal issue arising from an earlier meeting in Sydney. Participants included Ike Achebe, Chris Bayly, Patricia Clavin, Emma Rothschild, Glenda Sluga and Laura Wong. Click for the programme. Click for a list of participants.UN History
24 June 2005
A one-day meeting, organised by Sunil Amrith and Holger Nehring, took place in the Saltmarsh Rooms, King's College, Cambridge on 24 June 2005. The meeting was part of a series of meetings on UN history, and took place close to the 60th anniversary of the signing of the UN Charter in San Francisco on 26 June 1945. Participants included Paul Kennedy from Yale University and St John's College, and Jens Boel, Chief Archivist of UNESCO. Jens Boel talked about the UNESCO History Project which is underway in connection with the 60th anniversary of UNESCO, and Paul Kennedy talked about his then forthcoming book on the history of the UN.
II. Private Actors and Legitimacy
This project built on previous work by CSF in the understanding of the relationship between private actors, including corporations, philanthropists and philanthropic foundations, and NGOs, and the question of public legitimacy. Led by Melissa Lane, it explored a range of new themes related to these questions, including the role of compensation and the responsibility of individuals in relation to public benefits. Melissa Lane also continued work on the role of private for-profit corporations in relationship to public goods. The project also included research by Catherine Merridale on the public role and private experience of soldiers.
Meetings
French Politics and Secularism
1 March 2007
Patrick Weil (CNRS, Paris) spoke on ‘Secularism in France’ after the headscarf law of 2004 and the riots of November 2005. The talk and the discussion was in English and took place in the Winstanley Lecture Theatre, Trinity College. Patrick Weil is a senior research fellow of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique at the University of Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne) and a research fellow of the German Marshall Fund in the United States. He is the co-editor of Migration controls in the North Atlantic World (New York & Oxford, 2003) and author of Qu’est-ce qu’un Français? Histoire de la nationalité française depuis la Révolution (Paris, 2004). This event was organised by the Centre for History and Economics in connection with the Partnership and Security project, and by the Entente Cordiale – Trinity College French society.The Contract of Fallibility
18 October 2006
Dr Efraim Podoksik (Hebrew University) delivered a paper concerning the fallibility of political leaders and its implications for political theory. Dr Podoksik was a student on the PTIH MPhil at Cambridge and did his PhD here under David Runciman on Michael Oakeshott. The seminar was held in King’s College and was open to all members of the University. The presentation generated a lively discussion.When Things Go Wrong in Public and Private Sector Relationships: A Meeting on Compensation
25 September 2006
Melissa Lane organised a meeting in King’s College, Cambridge on 25 September 2006. Compensation is an increasingly important area in the relation between both private and public sector bodies and clients/consumers and citizen. Indeed, as the two relationships evolve, the comparison between consumer and citizen becomes more relevant. Exploring changing conceptions and practices as to what states and private bodies owe citizens in compensation when things go wrong is an underexplored way of tracking changes in those relationships themselves. The meeting examined aspects of these relationships from legal, historical, and philosophical perspectives. Click for the programme. Click for a list of participants.Death, Dumping, and Domestic Courts: Private Enforcement of International Norms
6 July 2005
Melissa Lane organised a small lunchtime seminar which took place in King's College. Professor Jeff Dunoff from Temple University Beasley School of Law, and a visiting scholar at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, introduced his paper on the enforcement of WTO norms in domestic courts and its implications for the relationship between public and private actors. General discussion followed.Reflecting on Partnerships: public-private partnerships, the World Bank, and the oil & gas industry
15 June 2005
Melissa Lane organised a roundtable meeting which took place on 15 June in King's College. Calliope Webber of the World Bank (on secondment to BP) was among participants. The aim was both to learn about her work in this area and to reflect on the challenges and achievements of such partnerships more generally in light of current political theory.Soldiers: Culture and Combat Motivation
5-6 February 2005
Catherine Merridale organised a workshop which took place in the Saltmarsh Rooms, King's College in Cambridge on 5-6 February. This was the second of two workshops on the topic of why soldiers fight. The first meeting was held in Cambridge in September 2004 and was attended by a wide group of academics and practitioners from Europe and the United States, and produced a lively discussion ranging across disciplines and also across several centuries of time. The second meeting pursued the earlier debate. The two workshops produced a coherent set of papers which were published in April 2006 by the Journal of Contemporary History. Amongst participants were Jocelyn Alexander, Tarak Barkawi, Christopher Dandeker, Edgar Jones, Josie McLellan, Ian Palmer, Tony Robben, Hew Strachan and Simon Wessely. Click for the programme. Click for a list of participants.Soldiers: Culture and Combat Motivation
4-5 September 2004
Catherine Merridale organised a two-day workshop in King's Collge in Cambridge. The overall topic was the question of combat motivation: why do soldiers fight? The issue of motivation appears to divide into two parts. The first is the stories that the soldiers are told: motivation in training; political/religious/ideological education; instructions on the field; propaganda and narrative after the war. The second consists of the stories they tell themselves, each other, and outsiders. These will change over time, so it is important to compare their accounts from before combat, their letters and diaries during the fighting, and their memoirs, tales, and oral history. Amongst participants were Tarak Barkawi, Drew Gilpin Faust, Edgar Jones, Josie McLellan, Ian Palmer, Charles Rosenberg and Simon Wessely. Click for the programme. Click for a list of participants.
III. Science, Health and Security
This project incorporated several strands which drew on previous work by CSF. Paul Warde continued his work on documenting environmental change, while developing a major new collaborative research project on the history of energy use. Together with Sverker Sörlin he organised a meeting and publication assessing environmental history as an emerging discipline. He also initiated a new project on history and sustainability. Work continued on public health, migration and security, on governance and infectious disease, and as a follow-up to earlier work on values and global health.
Meetings
Transnational Histories of Public Health in Asia
6 May 2008
Meeting organized by the Center for History and Economics, Harvard University and the China Medical Board.History and Sustainability
6-7 September 2007
A conference, organised by Paul Warde, was held on 6-7 September in the Centre for the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH). It provided a number of perspectives on the contribution historians can make to contemporary debates about sustainability and examined the following themes: International developments in the teaching of environmental history; current directions and debates within environmental history; historical ideas of sustainability; the role of history in educating for sustainable development in higher and pre-university education. Contributors included Rupert Brakspear, Vinita Damodaran, Brigid Hains, Poul Holm, Melissa Lane, Stephen Mosley, Jose Augusto Padua, Libby Robin, Sverker Sörlin and Paul Warde.Security and the Mind - 2
1 June 2007
An informal meeting on the subject of security and the mind took place at King’s College, Cambridge on Friday 1 June 2007. This meeting was organised in connection with two of the longest standing projects at the Centre, about the history of arms and disarmament, and about ideas of security. The object was to consider the new understanding of mind-brain and mind-body interactions, and the apparent new interest, on the part of national security and law enforcement agencies, in research on these interactions. Participants included Sunil Amrith, Nancy Cartwright, Ross Harrison, Olwen Hufton, Melissa Lane, David Palfrey, Martin Rees, Emma Rothschild, and Barbara Sahakian. For Professor Sahakian's presentation on her current research on neuroethical issues, please click here (9.85MB PPT file).Security and the Mind - 1
26 January 2007
This informal conversation with Elaine Scarry, Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University took place in King’s College. Participants included Caitlin Anderson, Melissa Lane, William Nelson, David Palfrey, Emma Rothschild, William St Clair, and Gareth Stedman Jones. Professor Scarry had an article published in the Boston Review in December 2006 about Rules of Engagement.Energy, Economic Growth and Pollution. European pasts and futures, c.1800-2006
12 May 2006
A one-day conference, organised by Paul Warde, took place in Pembroke College. The energy, economic growth and pollution (EGP) network has been undertaking a series of meetings and co-ordinated research since 2003. The prime goal of the network’s research since 2003 has been to illuminate the role of energy in long-term economic growth, and the environmental consequences of this role. The aim of the meeting was to facilitate discussion of papers produced by the EGP network and to develop a dialogue on a wide number of themes relating to energy consumption, economic and environmental change. Participants included Silvana Bartoletto, Kerstin Enflo, Astrid Kander, Paolo Malanima, Lennart Schön, Adam Tooze, and Tony Wrigley. Click for the the programme.The Uses of Environmental History: Cross Disciplinary Conversations
13-14 January 2006
This two-day conference, organised by Sverker Sörlin and Paul Warde, took place in the Department of Geography, CRASSH and St Catharine’s College. The conference aims were to provide some space to reflect on the achievements, diversity, and direction of environmental history, especially in its varied national, international and continental contexts. A related edited volume is forthcoming in 2008 (Nature's End. History and the Environment, Palgrave Macmillan). Further details about the conference are available. Conference web site.Uses of Environmental History
14 May 2005
This one-day colloquium, organised by Sverker Sörlin and Paul Warde, took place in Pembroke College and aimed to bring a wide range of reflection and current scholarly practice together in six papers. The subjects ranged from the historiography of the environment and the implicit values pertaining to various environmental history practices, to the issue of interdisciplinarity and the practice of research by young academics in the field. The participants included Peter Burke, Gerry Kearns and Chris Smout. This was the second in a series of meetings organised by the project on 'Uses of environmental history', which aims to examine the development and potential of the discipline. A web site for the Uses of Environmental History project is available.Uses of Environmental History
4 February 2005
Paul Warde and Sverker Sörlin organised a roundtable meeting on the uses of environmental history. The meeting took place in King's College on Friday 4 February, and the aim was to present ideas and promote discussion, especially of the cross-disciplinary 'uses' to which environmental history has been put, its current strengths and weaknesses. A short background paper by Sverker and Paul was presented at the meeting, followed by an open discussion.HIV/AIDS and the Black Death
24 May 2004
Melissa Lane organised a half-day workshop in the Saltmarsh Rooms, King's College in Cambridge. The workshop considered the extent to which parallels can be drawn between the social, political, and epidemiological impact of HIV/AIDS and of the Black Death. By bringing together historians of medieval and early modern Europe with specialists in the social and epidemiological aspects of HIV/AIDS and with experts in African history, we hoped to provoke a more sophisticated discussion of this comparison which is so often casually invoked. Participants included Lincoln Chen, Véronique Mottier, Miri Rubin, Richard Smith, Megan Vaughan and Alex de Waal. Click for the programme. Click for a list of participants.