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Events

Programme

2022/23

The Department of International History hosts numerous lectures, roundtables, debates and workshops by our academics, visiting academics and others. Members of the Department are also involved in a series of events around LSE. Below is a list of these events by chronological order. Our events are usually free and open to all with exceptions duly noted. We make video and audio recordings available whenever possible.

From time to time there are changes to event details so we strongly recommend that if you plan to attend this event you check back on this listing on the day of the event.

Modern Japan's Place in World History Website Events Image

7 March 2023, Tuesday 10am to 11:30am, Public Lecture 

Modern Japan's Place in World History: from Japan-UK perspectives

Chair: Professor Antony Best

To mark the publication of a new edited book Modern Japan’s Place in World History and recent developments in Anglo-Japanese security relations, we are hosting a webinar that will shine a light on modern Japan’s engagement with the outside world during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
The speakers include Professor Yuichi Hosoya (Keio), Ayako Kusunoki (International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto) and Barak Kushner (Cambridge) and the event will be chaired by Antony Best (LSE).


Hong Kong Takes Flight Website Events Image

4 May 2023, Thursday 6pm to 7.30pm, Public Lecture 

Hong Kong Takes Flight

Chair: Dr Ronald C. Po

Join Dr Ronald Po and Dr John Wong as they view the globalization of Hong Kong through the prism of its airline industry. This event will be centred around Dr John Wong's recently published book, Hong Kong Takes Flight. Commercial aviation took shape in Hong Kong as the city developed into a powerful economy. Rather than accepting air travel as an inevitability in the era of global mobility, in Hong Kong Takes Flight, John Wong argues that Hong Kong's development into a regional and global airline hub was not preordained.


The Soviet Union and Africa Economic Website Events Image

9 March 2023, Wednesday 6.30pm-8pm, Public Lecture 

The Soviet Union and Africa: Economic Sovereignty, Revolution, and the Cold War

Chair: Professor Vladislav Zubok 

This public event aims to open a new conversation between historians of the USSR, of Africa, and members of the public with an interest in the Cold War. The Soviet Union was a key actor in post-colonial Africa. From facilitating trade exchanges to training guerrilla fighters, Soviet politicians, academic specialists, and soldiers engaged with different parts of Africa throughout the Cold War.


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1 December 2022, Thursday 6pm-7.30pm, Public Lecture 

The annual Gerda Henkel Foundation Visiting Professorship Lecture: Cultures of Compromise in Germany and Britain, 1945–2000

Speaker: Professor Constantin Goschler 

Sociologist Norbert Elias regarded Britain and Germany as prime examples of contrasting cultures of compromise. However, political scientist Martin Greiffenhagen claims that the relationship between the cultures of compromise of the two countries has been reversed since 1945. It seems that it is no longer Britain that now possesses a pronounced culture of compromise, but rather the Federal Republic of Germany.
This lecture will discuss these claims on the basis of a comparison of both countries.


Book cover - The Condor Trials Transnational Repression and Human Rights in Latin America

23 November 2022, Wednesday 6pm-7:30pm, Public Lecture

The Condor Trials: Transnational Repression and Human Rights in Latin America

Speakers: Dr Francesca LessaProfessor Francisco Panizza and Dr Pilar Elizalde. 

Chair: Dr Tanya Harmer 

Join us for the launch of Dr Francesca Lessa’s new book The Condor Trials. Through the voices of survivors and witnesses, human rights activists, judicial actors, journalists, and historians, Dr Lessa unravels the secrets of transnational repression masterminded by South American dictators between 1969 and 1981.


John F. Kennedy and the Vietnam War: The Withdrawal Thesis

22 November 2022, Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Public Lecture

John F. Kennedy and the Vietnam War: The Withdrawal Thesis

Speaker: Professor Marc Selverstone

Chair: Professor Matthew Jones

This talk examines the arguments over whether President John F. Kennedy was preparing the ground for a US withdrawal from Vietnam in the months before his death, and whether US escalation of the war in Vietnam would have occurred if he had escaped the assassin’s bullet in November 1963


African Americans & Africa Book cover

20 October 2022, Thursday 12:30pm-2pm, co-hosted by the Department of International History

African Americans and Africa: Conversations across Centuries

Speaker: Professor Nemata Blyden

Chair: Dr Robtel Neajai Pailey

Professor Blyden's new research is an introduction to the complex relationship between African Americans and the African continent. What is an “African American” and how does this identity relate to the African continent? Rising immigration levels, globalization, and the United States’ first African American president have all sparked new dialogue around the question. This book provides an introduction to the relationship between African Americans and Africa from the era of slavery to the present, mapping several overlapping diasporas.