Progressive Geographies

Keith Thomas on the working methods of a historian – archive piece from the LRB.

I shared this back in the early days of this blog, but I came across it again today, and it’s worth another read.

Call for Papers “The Politics of Paper in the Early Modern World” Groningen, The Netherlands, 9-10 June 2016. Full details here.

Paper is today so ubiquitous that we often overlook it. Yet paper was once a brand-new communications technology and political tool that fundamentally influenced early modern political life in myriad ways. The revolutionary effects of paper on European politics and political communications are strikingly visible from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries onwards.

Although scholars of early modern politics and political communications depend upon paper as a building-block of their craft, we still know too little about the paper upon which early modern princes, statesmen, diplomats, secretaries, archivists, informers, spies, smugglers, couriers, postmasters, stationers, or newswriters depended. To paraphrase paperwork ethnologist Ben Kafka, historians have tended to look through paper, at how it can be used to reconstruct events or epistemic processes, but rarely at it, as a material artifact and communications technology around which coherent historical practices developed.

This two-day conference seeks to bring together scholars and paper experts working across a range of disciplines and geographic areas who are interested in the ways in which paper supported, shaped, or otherwise influenced practices of politics and political communications in the period ca.1350-ca.1800. It aims to sketch a more integral picture of the ways in which paper permitted early modern politics and political communications to unfold.

Up to 20 Funded PhD Studentships in Politics and International Studies (PAIS) at University of Warwick – deadlines in January 2016. Full details here.

Applications are invited for up to 20 funded PhD studentships in Politics and International Studies (PAIS) at the University of Warwick. We seek high calibre doctoral candidates with a proven track record of academic excellence – demonstrable via outcomes of assessed work, the quality of the research proposal, and professional and/or academic experience.

PAIS is one of the leading Politics departments in the UK and boasts an ambitious and pluralist research culture as recognised by our strong REF2014 performance (4^th on Research Intensity; 1^st on Research Environment). PhDs are a fundamental part of our success story.

PAIS is dedicated to the professional development of doctoral students via high quality supervision, a range of professional socialisation courses, and full inclusion in one or more of our four specialist research clusters – Political Theory, Comparative Politics and Democratisation, International Relations and Security, and International Political Economy. Many of our PhD students publish in highly ranked academic journals and several of our students have either been nominated for or won the BISA and PSA thesis prizes. Moreover, PAIS has an enviable track record of supporting students as they transition from doctoral studies to post-doctoral and early career research positions in the UK and globally.

Students interested in applying for funding should first consult our PhD application pages – www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/study/studyphd – before developing a strong academic proposal in co-ordination with an expert academic supervisor.