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
Professor Stacey Hynd
Dean of Postgraduate Research & the Doctoral College
01392 724323 S.Hynd@exeter.ac.uk Exeter
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 in the drop-down menus below.
Upcoming events
| When | Description | Location | Add to your calendar |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 November 2025 | Centre for Imperial and Global History Seminars: Meet our visiting researchers! | Amory B310 | Add event |
| 3 December 2025 | History Flagship Research Events Series: The Bonds of Freedom: Liberated Africans and the End of the Slave Trade | Amory C417 | Add event |
| 10 December 2025 | Centre for Imperial and Global History Research Seminars: Postgraduate Research Symposium | Amory B310 | Add event |
Past events
Autumn 2024 seminars
All seminars take place on Wednesdays 3.30pm-5.00pm in person in Room B310 in Amory unless otherwise noted, with the option to join remotely. Reminders, links, and abstracts will be sent a week in advance of each seminar to the CIGH mailing list. To be added, please email Chris and Beccy at c.w.sandal-wilson@exeter.ac.uk and r.williams2@exeter.ac.uk.
Wednesday 2nd October (Week 2)
Welcome (Back) Social - Amory Senior Common Room
Join us for an informal gathering to mark the start of the academic year, welcome new researchers, and catch up with old friends. Drinks and nibbles provided!
Wednesday 9th October (Week 3)
Work-in-progress lunchtime seminar - Peter Chalk 2.6 - 1:00pm-2:00pm
Emily Bridger will be sharing work she’s been doing on an article on ‘(Un)Remembering Sexual Violence in South African History’.
Wednesday 16th October (Week 4)
Archives: Digital, Material, Social - Amory B310
Join our panel of expert historians – Martin Thomas, Nelly Bekus, and David Thackeray – as they reflect on the archive as a digital, material, and social phenomenon, and offer tips for working in the archives of imperial and global history.
Wednesday 13th November (Week 8)
Meet the Children at War Team - Amory B310
Come along to hear about the research Chessie Baldwin, Pamela Nzabampema, Richard Raber, and Phoebe Shambaugh will be doing as part of the Children at War project.
Wednesday 27th November (Week 10)
Telling Our Stories, Finding Our Roots - Forum Seminar Room 6
Telling Our Stories, Finding Our Roots is a community heritage and oral history project focused on diverse and multicultural histories in Devon. Hilda Tosfor will be joining us to talk about the project – all welcome!
Wednesday 11th December (Week 12)
Postgraduate Research Symposium - Amory B310
As always, we’ll see out the term on a high note: join us as post-graduate researchers working on Imperial and Global History at Exeter share their work in progress.
Autumn 2023 Seminars
| Date | Location | Speaker / Event | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| WEDNESDAY 4 OCTOBER (week 2) | Laver Building (Level 8, Room 825) | Welcome social |
Join us for an informal gathering on the top floor of the Laver Building (level 8, Room 825) to mark the start of the academic year, welcome new researchers, and catch up with old friends. Wine, non-alcoholic drinks, and nibbles provided! |
| WEDNESDAY 18 OCTOBER (week 4) | Room B310, Amory | Archive Stories |
Join our panel of expert historians as they recount their stories from the archive and offer tips for undertaking archival work in imperial and global history. |
| WEDNESDAY 8 NOVEMBER (week 7) | Room B310, Amory | Darius Wainwright, University of Bristol |
‘Showcasing America, Depicting Iran: Iran, The Smithsonian, and the United States Information Agency, 1963-1970’ Co-hosted with the Centre for Persian and Iranian Studies and Art History and Visual Culture |
| WEDNESDAY 29 NOVEMBER (week 10) | Room B310, Amory | Grace Redhead, University of Exeter |
‘Between ‘Island Laboratories’: Sickle cell, genetic research and ‘race’ at the end of empire’ |
| WEDNESDAY 13 DECEMBER (week 12) | Room B310, Amory | Postgraduate research symposium |
Join us as post-graduate researchers working on Imperial and Global History at Exeter share their work in progress. |
Term 2 2022/23
| Date | Location | Speaker | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| WEDNESDAY 25 JANUARY | Amory B218 | Lu Chen, Sebastian Fonseca, & Andrea Espinoza Carvajal |
Retelling Global Histories of Health: a panel discussion with Connecting3Worlds postdoctoral researchers Co-hosted with the Centre for Medical History |
|
*THURSDAY 16 FEBRUARY* Postponed due to industrial action |
Seminar Room 2, The Forum |
Kim Wagner | Queen Mary, University of London |
‘“The most illuminating thing I have ever seen”: Photography, Violence and the Bud Dajo Massacre of 1906’ Co-hosted with the Centre for Histories of Violence and Conflict |
|
*WEDNESDAY 22 FEBRUARY* Postponed due to industrial action |
Pearson Teaching Room, Building:One | Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman | “Gay Lesson One: Section 28 was an anti-black law” |
| WEDNESDAY 8 MARCH | Pearson Teaching Room, Building:One | Remi Rana Allen | University of the Arts, London |
“Recovering Indian Women’s Histories through Creative Practice and Interdisciplinary Research: The Murder Trial of Gurnam Kaur” – Research in Conversation: Remi Rana Allen in conversation with Prof Stacey Hynd Co-hosted with Art History and Visual Culture |
|
WEDNESDAY 15 MARCH Postponed due to industrial action |
Amory B218 |
Margot Tudor, Catriona Pennell, & Thomas Owen |
“Reckoning with responsibility: the Mesopotamia Commission into British military failings during a moment of imperial transformation, 1916-1919” |
| WEDNESDAY 29 MARCH | Amory B218 | PGR Upgrades |
Join us as post-graduate researchers working on Imperial and Global History at Exeter share their work in progress.
|
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.
