Centre for Imperial and Global History

The Centre for Imperial and Global History brings together the research expertise of the University's eminent imperial, (post-)colonial, transnational and global historians, with a focus on global South histories. It is one of the UK's largest groups of imperial and global historians.

The Centre includes colleagues who work on African, Latin American, Islamic, East Asian and South Asian histories in both early-modern, modern and contemporary eras as well as those who are focused on British, French, North American and Eastern European experiences. We work collaboratively within the Centre, within historical and interdisciplinary research grants at Exeter and other universities, and we are engaged in co-producing research with practitioners and non-academic partners in multiple fields and with scholars in the Global South.

In this section

Centre staff

Our Imperial and Global History research involves staff and postgraduate students within the department, as well as academic staff from other institutions. More information about the research specialisms, publications and projects of our staff can be found within their individual profile pages.

Centre leadership

Centre staff

About the Centre for Imperial and Global History

Histories of the colonial and postcolonial worlds are contentious and unresolved projects, and those points of tension and irresolution are reflected in the Centre for Imperial and Global History. On one hand lies the project of global history – taking Britain or Europe as its point of departure and looking to explore its zones of interaction beyond the locality, region, nation state, or civilization. On the other lie efforts to recover the voices and subjectivities of the Global South; of looking to provincialize the European experience by highlighting the alternative experiences and normativities that existed even at the height of British and European imperial projects. The Centre for Imperial and Global History offers a space in which both these streams are analysed, explored and interrogated.

Some of our researchers analyse the development of global and imperial systems with a focus on political and economic structures, whilst others write histories from below by researching the lives of colonized populations and those who were marginalized within processes of globalization.

In all of our history-writing, however, we take the position that we must challenge the normative focus on ‘white whiteness’ in the writing of history and that the normative audience ought to be that same ‘white whiteness’. We aim to write of the Global South and its peoples for an audience above and beyond Britain. Working across British, French, Iberian, Islamic, American, Chinese and Russian imperial systems, we seek to recover indigenous, subaltern and marginalized voices, writing histories of those who experienced colonialism and still experience its ongoing consequences, both as people at the margins of and within the empires, and also studying them in their own right rather than simply in relation to colonial/imperial experiences.

Our members do this by tracing archival records across multiple locales in the North and South, conducting oral histories, and engaging with local communities, non-governmental organisations, and other non-academic partners across the globe. As one of the largest research centres for studying imperial, (post-)colonial and/or global histories in the United Kingdom, our research expertise is wide-ranging. In our teaching we are committed to efforts to decolonize the history curriculum at Exeter and to decentre it away from its current Eurocentrisms. We encourage applications from high-quality postgraduate students to join our research community and contribute to both academic and public discussion of all these issues.

The Centre runs a fortnightly seminar series featuring visiting and internal speakers, as well as ‘work in progress’ sessions and workshops. These serve as an important space of discussion, debate, and researcher development for our staff and postgraduate students, as well as a way of connecting the Centre to colonial, postcolonial or global scholars based outside Exeter.

Postgraduate study

Many postgraduate research students are attached to the Centre for Imperial and Global History, and staff at the Centre share their expertise with postgraduate taught students through their innovative teaching on the Imperial and Global History Pathway of the History MA.

Postgraduate research students

Postgraduate research students are integral members of the Centre for Imperial and Global History. Their doctoral projects engage and expand the key areas of research expertise of the Centre, and the Centre in turn offers a supportive and intellectually stimulating space for postgraduate research students. Postgraduate research students are warmly encouraged to attend all events of the Centre and to participate actively in the life of the Centre. Each term, the Centre hosts a research seminar in which postgraduate researchers are invited to share their work-in-progress and receive constructive feedback in a friendly environment from the wider Centre membership. These are excellent opportunities to gain feedback as well as confidence in presenting research and are a highlight of the research calendar year for the Centre. There is further information available on studying a PhD in History at the University of Exeter, as well as how to apply.

Postgraduate taught students

Staff at the Centre for Imperial and Global History also actively contribute to an exciting programme of MA teaching for postgraduate taught students. Students can choose to specialise in the Imperial and Global History pathway as part of the History MA at the University of Exeter.

As well as undertaking an independent research dissertation in the field of Imperial and Global History, postgraduate taught students on this pathway take our innovative Critical Approaches to Imperial and Global History module. Taught by our world-leading experts and directly informed by their specialist research, this module introduces students to key themes, methods, and analytical frameworks in the study of imperial and global history.

Events

We host a number of research seminars, workshops, and assorted events. You can find a list of upcoming and past events below.

Latest events

See all events.

There are no current events to display, but please come back soon for updates.

Past events

For a list of past events including Autumn 2023 and Autumn 2024 seminars please visit our separate web page which also includes events dating back to 2014.

Publications

Find a selection of recent publications associated with the work of the Centre. You can find a more detailed selection by browsing our staff profiles above.

2024

Palen M-W (2024), Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World. Princeton University Press

2023

Chatterjee N (2023). Changing regimes of law in the age of competing empires in South Asia. In Parthasarathi P, Sinha M, Gilmartin D (Eds.) Cambridge History of the Modern Indian Subcontinent, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Bridger E (2023). Apartheid’s ‘rape crisis’: understanding and addressing sexual violence in South Africa, 1970s–1990s. Women's History Review, 1-20.
Bridger E, Hazan E (2023). Surfeit and Silence: Sexual Violence in the Apartheid Archive. African Studies
Vargha D (2023). Missing pieces: Integrating the socialist world in global health history. History Compass, 21(7)
Sandal-Wilson C (2023). Mandatory Madness: Colonial Psychiatry and Mental Illness in British Mandate Palestine. Cambridge University Press
Davey J (2023). Tempest: The Royal Navy and the Age of Revolutions. Yale University Press

2022

Bekus N (2022). Memory wars in postimperial settings: the challenges of transnationalism and the risks of new totalizing mnemonics. Memory Studies, 15(6), 1291-1294.
Bridger E (2022). Survival in the "dumping grounds": a social history of apartheid relocation. JOURNAL OF AGRARIAN CHANGE, 22(2), 443-446.
Celik S (2022). Humans in Animalscapes: Reconstructing Vermin-Human Interactions in Rural Anatolia and Mesopotamia (ca. 1600-1850). Diyar – Journal of Ottoman, Turkish and Middle Eastern Studies, 3, 49-66.
Çelik S, Luke C, Roosevelt CH (2022). Ottoman Lakes and Fluid Landscapes:. Environing, Wetlands and Conservation in the Marmara Lake Basin, Circa 1550–1900. Environment and History
Hanley R (2022). Black Authors and British National Identity, 1763–1791. In  (Ed) African American Literature in Transition, 1750–1800, Cambridge University Press, 257-280
Mark J, Mark POMEHJ, Betts P, Betts POMEHP (2022). Socialism Goes Global the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the Age of Decolonisation. Oxford University Press.
Natarajan, K (2022). The privilege of the Indian passport (1947–1967): Caste, class, and the afterlives of indenture in Indian diplomacy. Modern Asian Studies.
Sandal-Wilson C (2022). The Colonial Clinic in Conflict: Towards a Medical History of the Palestinian Great Revolt, 1936–1939. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 47(1), 12-36.
Thomas M, Asselin P (2022). French Decolonisation and Civil War: the Dynamics of Violence in the Early Phases of Anti-colonial War in Vietnam and Algeria, 1940-1956. Journal Of Modern European History, 20 (4), 513-535.