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Global Governance Centre
04 March 2025

First GLO workshop this April: “Global Governance Reform: Perspectives from the Twentieth Century”

In April 2025, the GLO project will hold its first academic workshop, entitled “Global Governance Reform: Perspectives from the Twentieth Century”.

In April 2025, the GLO project will hold its first academic workshop, entitled “Global Governance Reform: Perspectives from the Twentieth Century”. The event will take place at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo. It is being organized by Daniel Gorman, Professor of History and Co-PI of GLO. This is an in-person event; if you are interested in attending, please contact Matthew Robertshaw.

The workshop explores the efforts of different types of movements and actors in the twentieth century to reform or transform international institutions. It will take across two days; see below for the programme.

 

Workshop Programme

Thursday, April 10

9:30      Opening (Daniel Gorman and Daniel Laqua)

9:45      Panel 1: The UN and the Politics of War and Peace (chair: Daniel Gorman)

  • Sophie Scott-Brown (Northumbria University) – Leveraging Trust and Emergency Positivity: The Sahara Anti Nuclear Protest and the United Nations, 1959–1960
  • Volker Prott (Aston University) – Trust and Depoliticization: The Rise and Fall of United Nations Conflict Management after 1945

10h45  Break

11h00 Panel 2: Transnational Civil Society (chair: Daniel Manulak)             

  • Lia Brazil (University of Notre Dame) – Red, White, Black and Blue Crosses and Crescents: Challenging the Authority of the International Committee of the Red Cross
  • Andrew Johnston (Carleton University) – Humanity above Nations: WILPF’s Feminist Critique of the League of Nations
  • Richard Huzzey (Durham University) – Jubilee 2000, Mistrust, and Global Governance at the Turn of the Millennium

12h30  Lunch

14h00  Panel 3: International Political Economy (chair: Amalia Ribi Forclaz)

  • Raphaël Orange-Leroy (Université Nantes) – Adapting the Paradigm: Developing Countries, UNCTAD, and the IMF in the Reform of the Bretton Woods System (1964–1969)
  • Kofi Gunu (Boston University) – Building Up by Cutting Loose: IMF Legitimacy and the Sterling Crisis of 1976
  • Christy Thornton – To Reckon with the Riot: IFI Responses to Social Protest in Historical Perspective

15h30 Break

16h00 Panel 4: Alternative Visions of Global Order (chair: Katherine Bruce-Lockhart)

  • Matthew Robertshaw (Waterloo University) – Mandatory Trust: Haitian Delegates and the Push for Decolonization through the Mandates/Trusteeship System, 1920–1960
  • Sandy Peebles (Johns Hopkins University) – Tanzania, Ujamaa and the New International Economic Order
  • Gordon Barrett (University of Manchester) – Representation and Reform? The People’s Republic of China and Global Scientific Governance

17h30  Day 1 Conclusion

followed by dinner

Friday, April 11

09h30  Panel 5: Rights Discourses (chair: Carolyn Biltoft)

  • Jake Hodder (Nottingham University) – African Americans, the League of Nations and the Art of Being Civilized
  • Michael Holm (Boston University) – For the Greater Good: America’s Forgotten Human Rights Moment
  • Boyd van Dijk (University of Oxford) – Universalizing the Geneva Conventions and Fundamental Principles, 1960–1980

11h00  Break

11h15  Panel 6: Democratizing Global Governance (chair: Henry Miller)

  • Daniel Laqua (Northumbria University) – A ‘League of Peoples’? Interwar Socialism and the Democratisation of the League of Nations
  • Anne-Isabelle Richard (Leiden University) – Democratizing the Council of Europe: Decolonization by Participation
  • Dena Freeman (Shanghai University) – Reform and Democratization of the UN Proposals by the World Movement for World Federal Government, 1948–58

12h45 Lunch

13h45 Roundtable Discussion

15h00 Internal GLO meeting

 

More information on the Global Governance, Trust and Democratic Engagement in Past and Present website.

This event is part of the SNSF funded "Citizens of the World: Global Governance and Democratic Engagement in Past and Present" project lead by Carolyn BILTOFT  and Amalia  RIBI FORCLAZ