The Department of International History at LSE, London and the Centre d'histoire de Science Po, Paris co-organised the joint LSE-Science Po Contemporary International History Seminar 2021/22. The seminar brings together researchers and experts presenting on any aspect of 20th and 21st century contemporary history, broadly defined, under the research theme: "Sovereignty | States, Empires, International Relations".
On 27 October, Alessandro Ambrosino, Graduate Institute's PhD Candidate in International History and Politics, presented during the session "European Transnational Communities and Borders Control". His presentation titled "The invention of 'Alpen-Adria'. Processes of Region-Building in Sensitive Border Areas (1945-2005)" looks at the Alps-Adriatic region, a unique point of contact between three linguistic families, to foreground how different conceptual constructions of space interact in sensitive areas and what impact they have on people.
To come, on 24 November, PhD Candidate Burak Sayim will be welcomed in a joint LSE-Science Po session to present his research "Occupied Istanbul as a Cominternian Hub: Sailors, Soldiers, and PostImperial Networks, 1918-1923" based on a forthcoming article which will be published by Itinerario: A journal of imperial and global interactions. Burak's paper is the product of research in five languages in five countries using documentation from French, British and Italian archives concerning the occupation, as well as Communist International archives in Moscow and several archives in Istanbul. It argues that Istanbul under tripartite British, French and Italian occupation counter-intuitively functioned as a vibrant hub for the Communist International. Accordingly, it underlines the agency of revolutionary sailors, post-Great War veteran militancy and the post-Ottoman multi-linguistic and multi-ethnical setting as the reasons making Istanbul a major communist hub.
In the current everchanging environment, discussing contemporary history is becoming of greater importance to understand the continuously evolving processes that our society undergoes. Applying an historical lens to recent or current issues that we see unfolding before us, is key for understanding international relations and global foreign policies as historical products. PhD Candidates Ambrosino and Sayim, through their expertise, bring their interdisciplinary eye to the LSE-Science Po Contemporary International History Seminar enriching the conversation and duly representing the Graduate Institute's Department of International History and Politics abroad.