Course Sandbjerg Summer School in Global History

Course description

The Sandbjerg Summer School in Global Historyallows PhD students to present their projects andto discuss them with peers and senior scholars ina structured, but informal setting.

It providesthem with an overview of global history andensures they are familiar with recentdevelopments in the field. The School provides aunique opportunity for participants to get toknow different perspectives on global history and to network with both established scholars andpeers from other countries.

About the organisers: The Sandbjerg Summer School inGlobal History (https://summerschool-globalhistory.net) is organized by a network ofhistorians from the fields of global, imperial and transnational history as well as area studies coming from six leading European research universities (Aarhus, Berne, King's CollegeLondon, Oslo, Paris Cité and Tübingen). All off them are members of The Guild, an associationof distinguished research-intensive universities from across Europe. Additionally, four of them are members of the Circle-U alliance that aims to foster student mobility and scholarly collaboration across the European continent.

Our take on Global History: Global History has become a vibrant field of research in recent years. It explores how societies in different parts of the world were shaped by global entanglements. From a European perspective, global history involves practices and experiences such as colonialism, imperialism, and liberalinternationalism, but also the ways in which European societies were influenced reciprocally by an influx of people, ideas, raw materials,plants and animals from other continents. Inshort, global history argues that we cannot understand the birth of the modern world and itspresent dynamics without examining transregional interaction.

However, PhD students face several challenges when undertaking aresearch project with a global historical trajectory. For instance, they are confronted with the fact that global history overlaps with different fields of research such as imperial and transnational history, and postcolonial, area oreven the new field of global studies, each ofwhich aims at overcoming methodological nationalism and Eurocentric notions of progressand modernity but involves a specific historiography and research paradigms that attimes contradict each other. What is more, global entanglements have a different significance depending on the historical period under examination and the positionality from whichthey are explored. Furthermore, global history is theoretically more aware than national historiography was. It addresses theories fromthe social sciences mostly in a critical fashion, for instance modernization and globalization theories, yet shares a thematic interest with them and thus addresses methodological andtheoretical issues such as decolonization, post-colonialism, or the anthropocene outspokenly.

Last, but not least, students in global history are confronted with very specific practical challenges such as the accessibility of sources, differences of language, and the questions of when aresearch perspective qualifies as global and how many different parts of the world, they must integrate into their research in order to make aglobal historical argument. Can a national study be global history?

Aim

The Sandbjerg Summer School in Global History provides PhD students with an invaluable chanceto reflect on the mentioned opportunities and challenges of global history and share their own experience. Each student will prepare a paper of 4000 to 5000 words for pre-circulation, and then introduce it at the School. It is necessary to contextualize your paper in relation to youroverall project. Is your paper a chapter? Amethodological or theoretical part? Please also include questions you are currently facing in yourresearch to facilitate a truly helpful discussion. Apanel comprising senior scholars, fellow PhD candidates, and an open discussion in the fullplenary, discuss every paper for at least forty-fiveminutes. This format ensures that each presenter not only receives detailed feedback ontheir own work but also acquires experience incommenting on other speakers’ work.

Additionally, lecturers and course participants participate in round table discussions, thereby providing further opportunities to buildexperience and share expertise. To facilitate this,everybody is asked to read everything. 

The Sandbjerg residential summer school is the perfect setting for these exchanges and ensures that students form new associations withs cholars from other European countries, which is helpful for their future careers.

Target group/Participants

Primarily, this course is designed for PhD candidates in Denmark and Europe. The course is relevant for all levels of the PhD process. Early-stage projects, preferably at the end of their first year or in their second year, profit from the breadth of perspectives the senior scholars provide and the general overview of the field. More mature projects profit from the extensive research expertise of the senior scholars and the discussions with international peers.

Lecturers

• Christof Dejung
• Bernd Grewe
• Daniel Maul
• Hagen Schulz-Forberg
• Sarah Stockwell
• Clarie Tran Thi Lien

Venue

The Sandbjerg residential 

Course dates:

• 18 June 2025 14:00 - 00:00
• 19 June 2025
• 20 June 2025
• 21 June 2025 08:00 - 14:00