Vol. 47, September 2023
Have you published something new in Global Urban History? Are you hosting a conference, workshop, or event? We'd like our members to know!
GUHP is a member-supported organization.
| GUHP Essay Prizes for Emerging Scholars
Up to three GUHP Essay Prizes will be awarded annually to early-career scholars for unpublished essays associated with graduate and post-graduate work in the field of Global Urban History. Eligible applicants should be GUHP members and can include graduate students, post-graduate scholars not in a tenure-track position, or early career scholars in the first three years of a tenure track position at the time of submission. Scholars who work at institutions in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia are especially encouraged to apply, as are scholars who work on periods before 1850.
Essays must be no longer than 8,000 words in English inclusive of citations, be based on original research, contain full citations to archival and relevant secondary sources, and engage with critical themes in global urban history. Essay topics can include studies of cities as creations and creators of larger-scale historical phenomena of all kinds - from empires and capitalism to global cultural communities and ecosystems; of connective, cross-border, ocean-, river- or borderland urban history; of comparative or connective urban histories; of urban environmental history; and/or studies that in general expand historical research to cities and urban regions that are underrepresented in the current urban historical literature.[more]
Application deadline: September 29, 2023 | Related Network Event Spotlight | | The Invention of the English Landscape c. 1700-1939
Book Launch and Symposium in honor of the late Professor Peter Borsay
University of Leicester
September 29, 2023, 3-5pm (GMT+1)
Attenborough Film Theatre/MS Teams
Please join the Centre for Urban History and the Centre for Regional and Local History for a celebration to mark the publication of the book.
The event will be chaired by Professor Rosemary Sweet with the following speakers:
1. Prof. Penelope J. Corfield, Royal Holloway and President of the International Association of Eighteenth-Century Studies
2. Dr. Richard Coopey, Aberystwyth University
3. Dr. Katy Layton Jones, Open University
4. Prof. Keith Snell, emeritus professor of English Local History, University of Leicester
This event is free and open to all.
|  | | Imperial Cities in the Tsarist, the Habsburg, and the Ottoman Empires
Edited By Ulrich Hofmeister and Florian Riedler
(Routledge, 2023)
This book explores the various ways imperial rule constituted and shaped the cities of Eastern Europe until World War I in the Tsarist, Habsburg, and Ottoman empires. In these three empires, the cities served as hubs of imperial rule: their institutions and infrastructures enabled the diffusion of power within the empires while they also served as the stages where the empire was displayed in monumental architecture and public rituals. The contributions to this volume address in detail the imperial entanglements of a dozen cities from a long-term perspective reaching back to the eighteenth century. They analyze the imperial capitals as well as smaller cities in the periphery. All of them are "imperial cities" in the sense that they possess traces of imperial rule. By comparing the three empires of Eastern Europe this volume seeks to establish commonalities in this particular geography and highlight trans-imperial exchanges and entanglements. [more]
| | | | Port City Atlas - Mapping European Port City Territories: From Understanding to Design
By Carola Hein, Yvonne van Mil, and Lucija Azman-Momirski
(nai0101 publishers, 2023)
Taking a comprehensive, mapping based approach, Port City Atlas visualizes 100 port city territories located on four seas and connected through shared waters. It provides a foundation for comparative analysis beyond case study approaches that are often locked into national contexts, select languages or disciplinary approaches. Conceived as a work of reference, the book makes the case for a sea-based approach to the understanding and design of Europe. [more]
| | | | What Is Critical Urbanism? Urban Research as Pedagogy
Edited by Kenny Cupers, Sophie Oldfield, Manuel Herz, Laura Nkula-Wenz, Emilio Distretti, and Myriam Perret
(Park Books, 2022)
Understanding and managing urban change in our global era demands a high degree of specialized and interdisciplinary knowledge. At the same time, city planners, architects, researchers, policymakers, and activists are deeply immersed in the chaotic and often contradictory urban realities that they are asked to address. What is Critical Urbanism? offers an innovative toolkit for engaging these present realities across disciplinary specializations and geographic purviews. [more] | | | | Spotlight on Extreme Heat in Urban South Asia
Edited by Nausheen H. Anwar
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2023
Until recently, there has been limited in-depth and qualitatively rich research on extreme heat and its impacts on cities and vulnerable inhabitants. But the frequency of annual extreme temperatures, heatwaves, and related deaths across the world, is increasing and can no longer be ignored. The five essays in this Spotlight On collection address several critical issues pertaining to the unique challenges that rising temperatures pose for South Asia, and the harms imposed on poor, marginalized, and vulnerable inhabitants. These harms include direct and indirect impacts such as rise in old and new chronic disease burdens, worsening respiratory conditions, heat stress related injuries, displacement, and infrastructural damage. [more]
| | | | Popular Planners: Newspaper Writers, Neighborhood Activists, and the Struggles against Housing Demolition in Lagos, Nigeria, 1951-1956
By Titilola Halimat Somotan
Journal of Urban History, August 29, 2023 (Online First)
As Nigeria prepared for independence in the 1950s, British planners and Nigerian politicians sought to improve Nigeria’s international image by dismantling what they called the “slums” of Central Lagos. This article examines how a loose coalition of residents—including female traders, homeowners, and tenants—challenged the idea that Central Lagos was a slum and pushed for alternative planning proposals that would suit residents’ interests. [more]
| | | | Special Issue: Capitalismos del “Sur Global”
Edited by Constanza Castro and Kaveh Yazdani
Historia Crítica, July 2023
Writings from and about the “Global South” have been central to discussions on the history of global capitalism(s), at least since the first decades of the 20th century, and continue to be relevant to this day. The contributions to this volume deepen our understanding of a number of pre- and early industrial political economies in the “Global South.” [more]
| | | | Special Issue: Nordics in Motion: Transimperial Spaces and Global Experiences of Nordic Colonialism
Edited by John L. Hennessey and Janne Lahti
Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, June 2023
This special issue investigates Nordic individuals in transimperial spaces. Though coming from countries with few or no formal colonies of their own, Nordic people were not distant observers but actively participated in the co-production of colonial ideology, knowledge, and rule from North America and the Caribbean in the west to the Dutch East Indies and China in the east, and from Africa in the south to Sápmi in the north. [more]
| | | | Centring the periphery in urban studies: Notes towards a research agenda on peripheral centralities
By Nicholas A. Phelps, Paul J. Maginn, and Roger Keil
Urban Studies, May 2023
Based on presentations across two days as part of an Urban Studies Foundation-funded seminar series, the authors elaborate a thematic agenda for considering the centrality of urban peripheries. They move beyond a typology of suburban centres to depict senses of peripheral centrality in terms of: their pervasiveness; their visibility across multiple scales; their underlying social relations; the agency exerted in their imagining and production, and the associated policy mobility. [more]
| | | | A Capitol Orchard: Botanical Networks and the Creation of a Japanese ‘Neo-Europe’
By Michael Thornton
American Historical Review, September 19, 2022
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the ethnic Japanese (wajin) population of Hokkaido ballooned from roughly sixty thousand residents, primarily living on the island’s southern tip, to more than two million people, scattered across the island. This explosive colonization was part of a global wave of settler colonialism. Colonial authorities built Hokkaido’s capital, Sapporo, as a colonial laboratory, importing ideas from Japan and abroad, recording their experiences in Hokkaido, and ultimately exporting that knowledge to Japan’s later colonies in East Asia. [more]
| | | Conferences, Workshops, and Events | | Book Launch: Port Cities Atlas
Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam
October 5, 2023
19:30 - 21:00 CEST
Explore the Port City Atlas, a new and comprehensive publication by nai010 publishers and TU Delft, featuring 100 port territories. During the evening, the atlas will be the starting point for experts to discuss cartography, design, transport, infrastructure, policy, living with water and more.
The atlas has been produced by the LDE PortCityFutures research group and the Faculty of Architecture at TU Delft. It is part of the series on the urbanization of the sea and the start of a sub-series on mapping port cities.
| Calls for Papers & Proposals |
CFP: The war of the waves revisited. Cultural and political uses of radio within contexts of domination
RadioMorphoses thematic issue n°11
This thematic issue will gather researchers working on radio in contexts characterized by domination. Although it will especially welcome articles focusing on the uses of radio in colonial settings, in situations characterized by racial domination or ethnic domination, proposals relating to the wider field of domination (social, cultural, gendered, etc.) can be considered. The central question at the basis of this volume will analyze the dynamics binding together radio, community and power; either in aiming to reproduce social hierarchies or to contest it.[more]
Submission deadline: September 18, 2023
| CFP: Modern Infrastructural Histories and the Global South panel
World Congress of Environmental History
Oulu, Finland, August 19-23, 2024
How can viewing the history of infrastructure from the Global South change our thinking about the making of modern environments? This panel aims to bring together scholars to discuss the diverse histories of modern infrastructure in the Global South, from the plantation to the internet cable. This panel is part of the work towards a proposed new handbook for the global history of modern infrastructure. The organisers invite contributions from scholars at all career stages working on any aspect of the history of infrastructure in the Global South from the 1700s to the present.[more]
Submission deadline: September 18, 2023
| CFP: Constructing climate coloniality in Africa: Histories, knowledges and materialities panel at the World Congress of Environmental History
Oulu, Finland, August 19-23, 2024
This panel interrogates the historical emergence of climate coloniality in African former colonial contexts. It draws upon a diversity of colonial experiences to examine the multidirectional relationships between ‘Western’ and local weather and climate knowledges and material practices.[more]
Submission deadline: September 18, 2023
| CFP:Transnational & Global History Seminar
University of Oxford
TGHS invites abstracts for autumn 2023 from graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and early career scholars. Accepted submissions will be invited to give a 30-minute presentation, either alone or as part of a panel organized around a particular theme or topic. [more]
Submission deadline: September 22, 2023
| CFP: Borders, Infrastructures, and Placed in the Modern City (Session M11)
Sixteenth Conference of the European Urban History Association
Ostrava, Czech Republic, September 4-7, 2024
This session explores the urban dimension of infrastructural development over the last two-hundred and fifty years, both in terms of how infrastructures have transformed cities and how urban dynamics have shaped infrastructure. This brings together histories of matter, energy and people to produce entangled histories of cities as environments.We welcome scholars working on these themes from across the world and at all career stages, in order to compare and explore the impact of the movements of goods and commodities on space across a wide variiety of urban contexts across the modern period. We would be delighted to receive proposals from scholars working with new sources or pioneering approaches, working in environmental humanities, digital history, social history, histories of technology and infrastructure and beyond.[more]
Submission deadline: September 30, 2023
| CFP: Tange transnational – Japanese futures for European cities (Session S22)
Sixteenth Conference of the European Urban History Association
Ostrava, Czech Republic, September 4-7, 2024
Modern ideas about urban futures easily transcend national boundaries. However, until the 1950s, urban theory and architectural design concepts invariably originated in Europe or in the US, and the resulting global flow of ideas was mainly unidirectional "from the West to the rest." Around 1960, the flow finally began to change direction when Tange Kenzō (1913-2005) became the first non-Western architect whose ideas were received globally. This resulted in a variety of influences, ranging from inspirations for certain single buildings or megastructures designed or built by European architects to the actual realisation of cities or parts of cities in Europe by Tange‘s office (e.g., Skopje, Bologna). The panel aims at examining Tange's influence on European architecture and urban planning in a comprehensive way. We aim to understand why he became accepted as part of the Western-dominated global avant-garde of architects, and how his ideas and projects have shaped European discourses on urban futures.[more]
Submission deadline: September 30, 2023
| CFP: Architecture, Villages, and their Entangled Histories: Rural-urban Encounters in the Islamic World (Session S15)
Sixteenth Conference of the European Urban History Association
Ostrava, Czech Republic, September 4-7, 2024
The historiography of architecture and urbanism in the Islamic world has mostly focused on cities and urban communities. This panel invites papers, which explore the making of villages and rural forms of governance over space in the Islamic world in interaction with urban centers and communities.[more]
Submission deadline: September 30, 2023
| CFP: Early Modern Digital Itineraries Workshop
EmDigIt Project
Washington, DC, August 5, 2024
EmDigIt seeks interested participants at work on premodern travel studies and with an interest in data-driven approaches. Researchers of any institutional affiliation or career stage (including current PhD students) are encouraged to apply. Prior digital humanities experience or involvement with spatial historical projects a plus, but not required. Participants will receive a stipend towards lodging and travel for the August 2024 in-person one-day conference hosted at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. [more]
Submission deadline: October 1, 2023
| CFP: Equity, Gender and Spatial Justice: Post-War Welfare States and their Landscapes and Cities
Special issue of Architecture and Culture
A growing number of research projects have highlighted the inequalities of access to, and provision of, green and open spaces, which has resulted in calls for rethinking the distribution of green assets in a more just way, as well as their role in addressing the Climate Crisis. At the same time the pandemic also brought to the forefront questions relating to the role of the State, paternalism and state-financed support structures. In response to these questions, this special collection will look at a diverse range of open and green spaces, that were designed in response to the idea of ‘fair shares for all’ deriving from the ideals of different Welfare States in post-war Europe and beyond. [more]
Submission deadline: October 3, 2023
| CFP: Transdisciplinary Conference on Suburban Studies
Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic, May 13-14, 2024
The conference aims to explore the intersection between various scholarly fields and the suburban experience, and how literature and other media have portrayed, shaped, and reflected suburban life and its evolution. Suburbanization has been a dominant trend in global urban development in the past century, with urban spaces and suburbs becoming the residence of choice for millions of people around the world. This transformation has had a profound impact on the social, cultural, economic, and political dynamics of urban areas. Literature, history, sociology, psychology, geography, geoinformatics and other disciplines have provided the methodology and research that has been important for the examination, critique, and celebration of the modern suburban experience, from its inception in the early 20th century to the present day. [more]
Submission deadline: October 30, 2023
| CFP: Scholarly Book on Suburban Studies
This interdisciplinary book aims to explore the complex, diverse, and dynamic nature of suburbs, their histories, and their futures. The book will seek to engage with a wide range of topics and themes related to sub/urban spaces, cultures, politics, and environments. Chapter proposals welcome from scholars across various disciplines, including but not limited to literature, sociology, history, anthropology, urban studies, geography, geoinformatics, urban planning, environmental studies, and cultural studies. Contributions should critically examine suburbs as spaces of social, economic, and political inequality and exclusion, as well as spaces of creativity, innovation, and resistance. [more]
Submission deadline: October 31, 2023
| CFP: Democratizing, Diversifying, and Decolonizing the World History Survey
World History Bulletin
World History Bulletin is seeking quality research essays, lesson plans, and classroom activities for inclusion in its upcoming Fall 2023 issue, “Democratizing, Diversifying, and Decolonizing the World History Survey.” Guest-edited by John Curry, “Democratizing, Diversifying, and Decolonizing the World History Survey” explores the ways in which world historians and instructors can introduce, examine, and complicate an array of topics such as slavery, colonialism, world wars, and climate crisis in the world history classroom. [more]
Submission deadline: November 10, 2023
| Fellowships, Grants, & Awards | | Fernand Braudel Senior Fellowships
European University Institute
Fernand Braudel Senior Fellowships provide a framework for established academics with an international reputation to pursue their research at the EUI. While longer stays than 3 months are welcome, Department of History and Civilisation and the Department of Political and Social Sciences normally funds fellows only up to 3 months, but provides office space and full library privileges for the entire duration of stay. [more]
Application deadline: September 30, 2023
| | | | Fung Global Fellows Program
Princeton University
During the academic year 2024-25, the program theme will be “Colonial Residues.” Applicants may address any region of the world, past and present, and may be from any disciplinary background in the humanities and social sciences. [more]
Eligibility: Scholars who received their Ph.D. or equivalent no earlier than September 1, 2014. Applicants must hold a faculty appointment, a professional research appointment, or be established independent scholars outside the United States at the time of application, to which they are expected to return at the conclusion of the fellowship.
Application deadline: November 15, 2023
| | | | Southern African History Book Prize
The Southern African Historical Society and the Historical Association of South Africa are inaugurating a book prize for the best scholarly history publication in book form. The book should be published by a southern African-based press and should be of scholarly and academic merit, as recognised by peers. The first prize will be awarded at the 29th Biennial SAHS conference at the University of Johannesburg in June 2024 and will consider books published with an ISBN publication date of 2021 or 2022. [more]
Application deadline: January 10, 2024 | | | |