5 February 2025, Wednesday 5pm - 6.30pm

"State Building in Cold War Asia: Comrades and Competitors on the Sino-Vietnamese Border", Dr Qingfei Yin Book Release 

Venue: CBG.1.06, Centre Building (CBG), LSE

Chair: Prof Rob Sidel

Join us as we celebrate the release of Dr Qingfei Yin's new book.

Departing from conventional studies of border hostility in inter-Asian relations, Yin Qingfei explores how two revolutionary states – China and Vietnam – each pursued policies that echoed the other and collaborated in extending their authority to the borderlands from 1949 to 1975.

Weaving together international, national, and transnational-local histories, this deeply researched and original study presents a new approach to the highly volatile Sino-Vietnamese relations during the Cold War, centering on the two modernising revolutionary powers' competitive and collaborative state building on the borderlands and local responses to it.

28 November 2024, Thursday 6pm - 7.30pm

"US-Cuban Relations: Before and After 5 November", with Prof Ernesto Dominguez Lopez and Prof Seida Barrera Rodriguez

Venue: Alumni Theatre, Cheng Kin Ku (CKK) Building, LSE

Chair: Dr Tanya Harmer

What are the prospects for US-Cuban relations after 5 November 2024? Professor Domínguez and Professor Barrera (University of Havana) explore the implications of the US election for Cuba and its relationship with the United States in the context of historical developments since 1959. 

27 November, Wednesday 5.30pm - 8.30pm

"Contested Spaces, Geo-Interventions, and the Search for Order", with Professor Paul Nolte - The Gerda Henkel Foundation Visiting Professorship Lecture

Venue: German Historical Institute London, 17 Bloomsbury Square, London WC1A 2NJ

Chair: Christina von Hodenburg (Director of German Historical Institute London)

The predicaments of the early twenty-first century seem to call established narratives of modern trajectories into question. Environmental crisis and the shock of the Anthropocene coincide with disillusionment about classical tales of Western liberty, emancipation, and conquest of planetary space. How did we get there, and what kinds of stories should we be telling?

20 November, Wednesday 6pm - 7.30pm

"Contesting Indonesia: Islamist, Separatist, and Communal Violence since 1945", Professor Kirsten Schulze Book Launch Event

Venue: MAR.2.04, Marshall Building, LSE

Chair: Professor Steve Casey

Professor Kirsten E. Schulze introduces her new book, which examines the violent constestation of Indonesia from the political, geographic, religious, ethnic and developmental periphery.

19 November, Tuesday 5.30pm - 7pm

"Intent to Destroy: Russia’s Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine", with Professor Eugene Finkel (Cold War Studies Project seminar)

Venue: LSE Lecture Theatre, Centre Building (CBG), LSE (Houghton St, London WC2A 2AE)

Chair: Professor Vladislav Zubok

Intent to Destroy uncovers the roots of the Russo-Ukrainian War. Ukraine is a key borderland between Russia and the West, and, following the rise of Russian nationalism in the nineteenth century, dominating Ukraine became the cornerstone of Russian policy.

The Russian Empire, USSR and Putin’s Russia had long used violence to successfully crush Ukrainian efforts to chart a separate path. Today’s violence is just a more extreme version of Russia’s past efforts. But unlike in the past, the people of Ukraine have overcome their deep internal divisions, and this rise of civic Ukrainian nationalism explains successful resistance to the invasion.

Please email ih.events@lse.ac.uk if you wish to attend.

14 November 2024, Thursday 6pm - 7.30pm

"History and Historical Writing in Pahlavi Iran", with Professor Ali Ansari - The Gholam Reza Nikpay Annual Lecture

Venue: Wolfson Theatre, Cheng Kin Ku (CKK) Building, LSE

Chair: Dr Roham Alvandi (Director, Iranian History Initiative, Department of International History, LSE)

This talk will look at the production and reception of historical writing in the Pahlavi period, placing it within the context of its Qajar inheritance and the legacy of the immense investment in education in the late Pahlavi period.

The paper will look at different types of historical writing and its reception, the transition from ‘mythological’ history to a more rigorous focus on the discipline as the State sought to develop a coherent national culture and identity. How did this new history develop, who were its practitioners and how successful was it in imbuing a sense not only of ‘national’ identity, but a ‘historical consciousness’ with a developed awareness of context and process.

24 October 2024, Thursday 6pm - 7pm

New Stories from the Black Atlantic, with Dr Jake Richards

Venue: TBC to ticketholders prior to the event

Chair: Professor Larry Kramer (President and Vice Chancellor of LSE)

Join Dr Jake Subryan Richards as he discusses the research and creative process behind the award-winning Black Atlantic exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

The exhibition reveals the stories that have been silenced from history, not just stories of exploitation, but those of resilience and liberation, too. It shows how through resisting colonial slavery, people produced new cultures known as the Black Atlantic, that continue to shape our world.

10 October 2024, Thursday 6pm - 7.30pm 

"Reflections on a life in international, Russian and comparative history", with Professor Dominic Lieven

Venue: MAR.1.04, Marshall Building (MAR), LSE (44 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3LY)

Chair: Professor Marc Baer (Head of Department, International History)

This lecture tells the story of the survival strategy of a prince in an Anglo-American academic community of Russianists obsessed by the Russian Revolution and dominated by socialists and liberals. It is about adventures in the Soviet archives, but more seriously, it is about the impact of the Cold War on the way that Russian history was studied and taught in the West.

Linking autobiography and Cold War politics, this lecture explains why and how a historian worked for 31 years in LSE’s Political Science (Government) Department before transferring to be head of the Department of International History and then departing for the last decade of his career as a Research Professor in Cambridge, a post that is as close to Heaven as any British historian gets without actually dying. 

14 June 2024, Friday 9am - 6pm (Conference)

"Socialist Ideas of Europe in the World - 1871 to 1968"

Venue: SAL.LG.04, Sir Arthur Lewis Building (SAL), LSE

Chair: Dr Dina Gusejnova (LSE), Mr Edoardo Vaccari (LSE) and Mr Tanroop Sandhu (QMUL)

Can Socialism survive without an international(ist) vision? Can such a shared vision even exist? What role should an increasingly global left attribute to Europe?

The Conference will bring together graduate students, scholars, journalists, and political figures to reflect on the histories and competing traditions in international leftist politics and disentangle the complex relationship between history and current affairs.

23 May 2024, Tuesday 6pm - 7.30pm 

Dr Rosalind Coffey Book Release: "The British Press, Public Opinion, and the End of Empire in Africa: The ‘Wind of Change’, 1957-60"

Venue: Alumni Theatre, Cheng Kin Ku Building (CKK), LSE

Dr Rosalind Coffey’s first book explores the cultural and political significance of British newspaper coverage of Africa during decolonisation. It argues that the press coverage not only influenced British policy and public attitudes, but also political and civic cultures in Africa. The book is the first in-depth study of the role of the British press in African decolonisation. It is also the first book to explore how British newspapers were received in Africa.

With the media covering global justice movements extensively today, the book is a timely exploration of transnational processes that effect (and inhibit) political and cultural transformations concerning colonialism.

7 May 2024, Tuesday 5pm - 6.30pm 

Dr Elizabeth Ingleson Book Release, "Made in China: When US-China interests converged to transform global trade"

Venue: Wolfson Theatre, Cheng Kin Ku Building (CKK), LSE

Chair: Prof Trevor Trubowitz

How did China—the world’s largest communist nation—converge with global capitalism? And when did this occur? In this event, LSE historian Dr. Elizabeth Ingleson argues that this convergence began in the early 1970s, when the United States and China re-opened trade and the interests of US capitalists and the Chinese state gradually aligned: at the expense of US labor and aided by US diplomats. 

The Phelan United States Centre is hosting this exciting event, featuring one of our own academics. 

8 March 2024, Friday 10am - 6.30pm (Conference)

"Women and Diplomacy: From the Interwar to the Cold War"

Chair: Dr Artemis Photiadou and Dr Victoria Phillips

Download the Conference Programme 

Location: 

• Conference Day (9.30am - 4.30pm): SAL.1.05, Sir Arthur Lewis Building (SAL), LSE
• (CANCELLED) Evening Keynote Lecture (5pm - 6.30pm): MAR.2.04, Marshall Building (MAR), LSE

To mark International Women's Day and the tenth anniversary of the official opening of the Women's Library Reading Room at the LSE, the Department of International History’s project in History, Culture and Diplomacy is pleased to announce a day of papers, panels, and a keynote speech on women, diplomacy and politics, on Friday 8 March 2024. 

The event will be held in partnership with the LSE Library and its Women's Library, which will celebrate with its first Library Late evening event on Thursday 7 March 2024. On Friday, 8 March, the Department of International History conference will open with a paper by Denise M. Lynn, author of Where is Juliet Stuart Poyntz: Gender, Spycraft and anti-Stalinism in the Early Cold War, in which she will discuss Poyntz’s work at LSE during the interwar.

After a selection of panels and papers by faculty and emerging scholars, the day will conclude at 5:00pm with a keynote speech by the renowned award-winning biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook, “Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at Seventy-five.”

28 February 2024, Wednesday 5:30pm - 7pm, Seminar

Ireland’s Role in British Colonial Capitalism : Irish “Men of Capital” and William Pitt’s Irish Proposals, 1784-1785

Venue: LSE, Marshall building, room 2.05 LSE 

Chair: Dr Dina Gusejnova

In addressing the British parliament in April 1785, the prime minister, William Pitt, proposed to give Ireland “complete liberty and equality” with Britain “in matters of trade”. Historians explain the subsequent failure of Pitt’s proposals in terms of divergent ideologies about trade. 

This Seminar will explore, this paper's focus on the concrete economic issues at stake in Pitt’s “Irish” proposals. The paper shows that Pitt’s proposals emerged from years of debates in which contemporaries conceived of the British Atlantic economy in terms of a systemic integration of trade, shipping, and credit that evokes the term “colonial capitalism”. Ireland’s dependent relationship with that system, and the perceived failure of “free trade” to overcome its poverty, led Irish “improvers” to devise rival plans to attract “men of capital” to Ireland. Pitt played an important role in this Irish debate by favouring one of these plans, but for fiscal rather than other economic reasons. That calculus made him vulnerable to attack from economic interests in Britain.

25 January 2024, Thursday 6pm - 7.30pm, Annual Lecture

"Affirming the History of African and Caribbean People in Britain" with Professor Hakim Adi

Venue: CLM.2.02, Clement House (CLM), LSE 
(99 Aldwych, London WC2A 2AE)

Chair: Professor Marc David Baer

It is now over 60 years since a professor of history at the University of Oxford infamously declared: ‘Perhaps in the future there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none, only the history of Europeans in Africa’.

It might be hoped that such Eurocentrism had long been dead, but too often it appears to be alive, if not well, and still a major problem in the study and teaching of history in this country.

In this lecture Hakim Adi reflects on how affirming the history of African and Caribbean people enhances the study of the history of Britain and why a struggle against Eurocentrism in all its forms is still so important in higher education and beyond.

18 January 2024, Thursday 6pm - 7.30pm, Book Launch

"Doctor, Teacher, Terrorist: The Life and Legacy of Al-Qaeda Leader Ayman al-Zawahiri" with Dr. Sajjan Gohel

Venue: MAR.1.08, Marshall Building (MAR), LSE 

Chair: Dr Kirsten Schulze

Dr. Sajjan Gohel’s book casts fresh light on al-Zawahiri's character and experiences in terrorism which has either never been discussed before or only briefly in passing reference. Al-Zawahiri's life in terrorism, spanned over half a century and intersected with some of the most important global geopolitical issues and conflicts across continents.

The book also helps us to understand more fully the evolution of al-Qaeda's motivations, methods, recruitment, and ideology, as well as how transnational terrorism developed.