International Conference

Global War, Global Moments, Global Connections – International Conference – University of Zurich

International Conference about the First World War at the University of Zurich

31.01.2018 – 02.02.2018

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The conference is kindly sponsored and supported by the following institutions:

newcastle

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Joel Bigler (BIG Media Bigler) will be present with his camera during the keynotes and certain panels. We are grateful for his support.

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Wednesday, January 31

08:40: Registration (University of Zurich, Main Building, Room KOL-F-104, first floor) / Conference Opening by Thomas Schmutz and Gwendal Piégais

09:15 – Panel I: Global Connections in Wartime.

  • Dr. Martin Deuerlein (University of Tübingen): Global War, International Relations and the Question of Order in an Interdependent World
  • Dr. Steve Marti (Independent Scholar, Ontario, Canada): Dominion Over Empire: Race and Recruitment in Britain’s Settler Colonies
  • Dr. Francesca Piana (Swiss National Science Foundation): An Endless War: Gendering International Relief, 1914-1923
  • Dr. Daniel Palmieri (Red Cross Archive, Geneva): Humanitarianism in Global War: The International Committee of the Red Cross in WWI

Young Researcher Presentation: Adam Ohnesorge (University of Zurich): The forgotten civilian prisoners and Swiss peace mission in Corsica during the Great War

11:45 – Panel II: A question of perspective  – Soundscapes and Time Frames.

  • Dr. Yaron Jean (Sapir College, Negev, Israel): The Sounds of the Invisible: Warfare Technology, Obliteration and Global Wars
  • Sarah Laufs (Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf): Rethinking the Time-Frames of the Great War – Ruptures, Continuities and German Wartime Experiences

12:20 Lunch

13:40 – Panel III: Global Switzerland.

  • Dr. Peter Fleer (Swiss Federal Archives Berne): Archives and Issues of the First World War – Doing Research in the Swiss Federal Archives
  • PD Dr. Daniel Marc Segesser (University of Bern): From Bregenz via Turkestan to Solothurn: Military Migration in the First World War in transnational Perspective
  • Dr. Michael Olsansky (MILAK ETH): Between Military Diplomacy and Transnational Military Exchange: Swiss Officers in the Theaters of War of the First World War
  • Nina Flurina Caprez (University of Fribourg): “When peace was difficult” – What the history of a monastery tells about World War I and its aftermath

15:50 – Panel IV: Migration in Wartime.

  • Prof. Dr. Christian Koller (University of Zurich; Sozialarchiv): Intercontinental War Migration of French and British Colonial Troops
  • Maria Ines Tato (CONICET – University of Buenos Aires – RavignaniInstitute / Superior School of War – Faculty of the Army – University of National Defense): Transnational solidarities: Immigrant communities in Argentina facing the Great War
  • Dr. Konstantinos Karatzas (Research Fellow, Institute of International Economic Relations, Greece;  London Center for Interdisciplinary Research): The Greek perspective: Migration, Imperial Dreams and TragedyDr.
  • Shuang Wen (National University of Singapur): From Moral to Morale: The YMCA and the Chinese-Arab Laboureres in WWI

17:20 Break and Swiss Dinner 

18:45 Keynote and Roundtable (History of Violence) – UZH Main Building, Room F-101

Opening Remarks by Dean Prof. Dr. Klaus Jonas (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Zurich)

19:00 Keynote I Prof. Dr. Christian Gerlach (University of Bern): World War I within a global history of mass violence in the first third of the 20th century

19. 45 Roundtable. Chair:  Prof. Dr. Philip Dwyer (Director of the Centre for the History of Violence at the University of Newcastle, Australia): Mass Violence in the Beginning of the 20th century with Prof. Dr. Annette Becker (University of Nanterre, Paris), Prof. Dr. Christian Gerlach (University of Bern), Prof. Dr. Hans-Lukas Kieser (University of Newcastle, Australia, and University of Zurich), Dr. Mark Jones (University College Dublin, Centre for War Studies)

Thursday, February 1 

8:30 – Registration. Main building (KOL-F-117)

8:45 – Panel V: Networks, Intelligence and Secret Diplomacy.

  • Matthew Kovac (University of Oxford): Traitors to the Crown: British Military Veterans in the IRA, 1918-1923
  • Samuel Krug (FU Berlin): A global network for a global revolution? Transnational connections of German WWI propaganda
  • Dr. Christian Stachelbeck (Zentrum für Militärgeschichte und Sozialwissenschaften der Bundeswehr): Shadowman or Bureaucrat in uniform – Walter Nicolai and the German military intelligence service in WWI
  • Jacopo Lorenzini (Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici, Naples): Military élites go to war: Italy and Europe

10:50 – Panel VI: Alliance, Loyalty and Intervention.

  • Sam Klein (University of St. Andrews): Coalition Politics and the Preparations for the Coup de Grâce
  • Dr. William Thomas Allison (Georgia Southern University, USA): With Arms or Food? A Local View on the American Decision to Intervene in North Russia, 1918
  • Dr. Takuma Melber (University of Heidelberg): « Alle Menschen werden Brüder » – German soldiers in Japanese war captivity and the First World War in Far East
  • Tomáš  Kykal (Military History Institute, Prague): Conflict of Conscience and Duty – Czechs in the First World War
  • Aliaksandr Piahanau (University of Toulouse): A separate peace with Hungary? The Magyar peace feelers at the beginning of WWI (1914-1915)

12:00 Lunch

13:30 – Panel VII: Transnational commemoration.

  • Karla Vanraepenbusch (Université catholique de Louvain): Le Mémorial interallié, un ‘mémorial de la paix’ qui exprime cependant un refus de démobiliser les esprits)
  • Stefan Kurz (HGM, University of Vienna): A common museum for a common army beyond the nation? The ‘k.u.k. Heeresmuseum’ in Vienna and its claim to represent a supranational Austro-Hungarian view on the First World War
  • Prof. Dr. Georgi Verbeeck (Maastricht University and University of Leuven): Remembering the First World War in Belgium – From National to Global Perspectives.
  • Anna Isaieva (Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Kiev): Visual representation of colonial troops in British and French commemoration projects of the Centennial of the Great War.
  • Mateusz Mazzini (Polish Academy of Sciences): The 100 years of Today. Poland`s WWI commemorations and the meta-memory of independence.

15:50 – Keynote II: Prof. Dr. Maartje Abbenhuis (University of Auckland): Global war, global Switzerland: Neutrals at the heart of the First World War – KOL-F-101

17:00 – Panel: Neutrality and Diplomacy in the Global War.

  • Dr. Michael Auwers (University of Antwerp): Away with Neutrality. The ‘Colonial’ Coup of Belgian Diplomacy during the First World War
  • Elisabeth Marie Piller (Norwegian University of Science and Technology): The Great War and the Power of Neutrality: The Commission for Relief in Belgium and the Global Public ‘Conscience’
  • Annalise Higgins (Trinity College, Cambridge): The international status of interoceanic canals after the First World War

18:40 – Keynote III: Prof. Dr. Harald Fischer-Tiné (ETH Zurich): Cheering up Soldiers, educating Civilians: The transnational Activities of the Indian YMCA during the Great War (1914-1920)

19:30 Conference dinner (optional) in the Old Town

Friday, February 2 

9:00 – Main building (KOL-F-117)

Keynote IV: Prof. Dr. Annette Becker (Université de Paris Nanterre): The Ordeal of Civilians in a Globalized World

10:00 – Panel IX: Religion and Diplomacy.

  • Christoph Valentin (University of Münster): Between humanitarianism and own political interests. The politics of the Holy See during the First World War
  • Dr. Maik Schmerbauch (University of Frankfurt): The Catholic Church and the German Revolution 1918-1919 in the view of the catholic press
  • Joanna Simonow (ETH Zurich): Missionary Networks and the Global Response to Famine in India in the Wake of the First World War, c.1918-1925
  • Dr. Martin Arndt (University of Zagreb): Jews between the Frontlines

11:20 – Panel X: From War to peace.

  • Dr. Jasper M. Trautsch (University of Regensburg): The Significance of the First World War for the Conceptual History of the West
  • Lukasz Mieszkowski (Imre Kertesz Kolleg, Jena): A Foreign Lady – The Polish Episode in the influenza pandemic of 1918.
  • Radhika Singha (Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi): Terminating the war, conserving its trace: India 1918 – 1921.
  • Dr. Ángel Alcalde (Center for the History of Global Development, Shanghai University): War Veterans as transnational actors – Veterans “Internationalisms” after World War I.
  • Michaela Oberreiter (University of Vienna): The state structure of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic and the Austrian legal heritage

12:40 Lunch at Cafeteria of the University

14:00 – Keynote V: Prof. Dr. Hans-Lukas Kieser (University of Newcastle and University of Zurich): “Istanbul in the 1910s: A central hub of diplomacy and global conflict”

15:00 – Panel XI: The Global Middle East – From Sideshow to Violent Epicenter. 

  • Remzi Cagatay Cakirlar (Leiden University): Édouard Herriot, a vanguard French Radical endorsing the Young Turks’ cause at the Dawn of the Great War.
  • Dr. Jonathan Krause (King’s College London; University of Oxford): The Global Anticolonial Backlash, 1916-17.
  • Carl-Leo Graf von Hohenthal (University of Freiburg): Ireland in Palestine? Jews, Arabs, Britons and new perspectives on the fight for the future of Mandate Palestine.
  • Simona Berhe (University of Milan): From Colonial War to World War – Lybia during the First World War.
  • Sebastian Willert (TU Berlin):  Cultural Imperialism versus Protectionism? On the role of the Deutsch-türkische Denkmalschutz-Kommando during the First World War.

17:10 – Panel XII: A New Order – International Law and International Relations. 

  • Arno Barth (Duisburg-Essen University): „Nothing should be left to chance“ – Regulatory Models of Western Peace Planning.
  • Dr. Aimé Raoul Sumo Tayo (Université de Yaoundé I, Cameroun): Finir un conflit: les modalités de sortie de guerre en Afrique pendant la Première Guerre Mondiale.
  • Dr. Jan Pajor (University of Lodz): The United States and China’s entry into WWI.
  • Prof. Dr. Michael Neiberg (US Army War College): America’s Road to War, 1914-1917.

Final Comments and Discussion. 

Optional dinner in the Old Town with city tour

Panneau 1

Location – University of Zurich

University of Zurich
Historisches Seminar, Universität Zürich
Karl-Schmitt-Strasse 4
8006 Zürich
Zurich
Zürich
Panneau 2

Contact – Organizers

Thomas Schmutz studied History, Political Science and German Literature at the University of Zurich and Paris Diderot 7. He is a PhD candidate at the Center for the History of Violence in Newcastle, Australia, and at the University of Zurich. He is interested in transnational, diplomatic and military history, genocide studies and discourses on otherness. His doctoral thesis concentrates on the Western diplomacy in Asia before and during the First World War with regard to violence, intervention and reform. The research highlights entanglements between Europe and Asia by focusing on the relationship between Western diplomacy and Asian Christians. This approach challenges Eurocentric views on the global war and the time of high imperialism from a diplomatic perspective. Schmutz has published some of his findings on the Armenian Reform Question with Hans-Lukas Kieser and Mehmet Polatel in a co-authored article titled Reform or cataclysm? The agreement of 8 February 1914, (Journal of Genocide Research, 17/3 (2015).

Gwendal Piégais is a PhD candidate in contemporary history at the Université de Bretagne Occidentale (University of Western Brittany) in Brest. He writes a doctoral thesis about “The Russian Expeditionary Force in France and the Balkans during the Great War”. His first research led him to the military history of Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries and to the history of intelligence services during the First World War, before turning to the history of Central Empires. He published « Le déserteur, source de renseignements du Secret Service – Les interrogatoires du Réseau Hunter aux Pays-Bas de 1916 à 1918 [The Deserter, a source of information for the Secret Service – Interrogations of the Hunter Network in the Netherlands from 1916 to 1918]′′ in Cahiers d’études du renseignement, Maklu, Anvers, no 7, 2017, and « Les motivations complexes des déserteurs polonais aux Pays-Bas, 1916-1918 [Complex motivations of Polish deserters in the Netherlands, 1916-1918]” in « Soldats d’entre-deux ». Les Identités nationales dans les témoignages des soldats des Empires centraux, Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 2017.

Support Team

  • Dr. Adrian Hänni
  • Anna Regula Richi
  • Linda Büchler
  • Aurelia Widmer
  • Stjepan Muza
  • Sara Müller
  • Melanie Jäger
  • Dominik Steiner
  • Simon van Rekum
  • Caroline Schneider
  • Thierry Honegger

If you want to attend conference, please write to : global.war.conference@gmail.com

Panneau 3

Speakers

  • PD Dr. Daniel Marc Segesser (University of Bern) : «From Bregenz via Turkestan to Solothurn: Military Migration in the First World War in transnational Perspective»
  • Prof. Dr. Christian Koller (University of Zurich, Sozialarchiv) : «Intercontinental War Migration of French and British Colonial Troops»
  • Dr. Francesca Piana (Swiss National Science Foundation) : An Endless War: Performing Gender in International Relief, 1914-1923»
  • Joanna Simonow (ETH Zurich) : «Missionary Networks and the Global Response to Famine in India in the Wake of the First World War, c.1918-1925»
  • Dr. Daniel Palmieri (Red Cross Archive Geneva) : «Humanitarianism in Global War: The International Committee of the Red Cross in WWI»
  • Dr. Peter Fleer (Swiss Federal Archives Berne) : «Archives and Issues of the First World War – Doing Research in the Swiss Federal Archives»
  • Dr. Michael Olsansky (MILAK, ETH) : «Between Military Diplomacy and Transnational Military Exchange: Swiss Officers in the Theatres of War of the First World War»
  • Nina Flurina Caprez (University of Fribourg) : «When peace was difficult. The history of a monastery tells about World War I and its aftermath»
  • Arno Barth (Duisburg-Essen University) : «Nothing should be left to chance – Regulatory Models of Western Peace Planning»
  • Sebastian Willert (TU Berlin) : «Cultural Imperialism Versus Protectionism? Role of Antiquities as a Matter of Conflict Within the German and Ottoman Art Policy During the First World War»
  • Christoph Valentin (University of Münster) : «Between humanitarianism and own political interests. The politics of the Holy See during the First World War»
  • Stefan Kurz (HGM, University of Vienna) : «A common museum for a common army beyond the nation? The ‘k.u.k. Heeresmuseum’ in Vienna and its claim to represent a supranational Austro-Hungarian view on the First World War»
  • Dr. Jonathan Krause (King’s College London; University of Oxford) : «The Global Anticolonial Backlash, 1916-17»
  • Prof. Dr. Georgi Verbeeck (University of Maastricht and University of Leuven) : «Remembering the First World War in Belgium : From National to Global Perspectives»
  • Dr. Christian Stachelbeck (Zentrum für Militärgeschichte und Sozialwissenschaften der Bundeswehr) : «Shadowman or Bureaucrat in uniform. Walter Nicolai  and the German military intelligence service in WW1»
  • Annalise Higgins (Trinity College, Cambridge) : «The international status of interoceanic canals after the First World»
  • Steve Marti (Independent Scholar, Ontario, Canada) «Dominion Over Empire: Race and Recruitment in Britain’s Settler Colonies»
  • Matthew Kovac (University of Oxford) : «Traitors to the Crown: British Military Veterans in the IRA, 1918-1923»
  • Dr. Matt Haultain-Gall (University of Sydney and Leuven) : «Lions and Kangaroos: Mobilising the Anzac legend in the Ypres salient»
  • Sam Klein (University St. Andrews) : «Coalition Politics and the Preparations for the Coup de Grâce»
  • Karla Vanraepenbusch (Université catholique de Louvain) : «Le Mémorial interallié, un ‘mémorial de la paix’ qui exprime cependant un refus de démobiliser les esprits»
  • Remzi Cagatay Cakirlar (Leiden University) : «Édouard Herriot, a vanguard French Radical endorsing the Young Turks’ cause at the Dawn of the Great War»
  • Dr. Aimé Raoul Sumo Tayo (Université de Yaoundé I – Cameroun) : «Finir un conflit: les modalitiés de sortie de guerre en Afrique pendant la Première Guerre Mondiale»
  • Anna Isaieva (Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Kiev) : «Visual representation of colonial troops in British and French commemoration projects of the Centennial of the Great War»
  • Samuel Krug (FU Berlin) : «A global network for a global revolution? Transnational connections of German WWI propaganda»
  • Sarah Laufs (Heinrich-Heine-University Dusseldorf) : «Rethinking the Time-Frames of the Great War – Ruptures, Continuities and German Wartime Experiences»
  • Lukasz Mieszkowski (Imre Kertesz Kolleg Jena) : «A Foreign Lady: The Polish Episode in the influenza pandemic of 1918»
  • Dr. Shuang Wen (National University of Singapur) : «From Moral to Morale: The YMCA and Chinese-Arab Labourers in WWI»
  • Maik Schmerbauch (University of Frankfurt) : «The catholic church and the german revolution 1918-1919 in the view of the catholic press»
  • Simona Berhe (University of Milan) : «From Colonial War to World War: Libya during the First World War»
  • Maria Ines Tato (CONICET – University of Buenos Aires – Ravignani Institute / Superior School of War – Faculty of the Army – University of National Defense) : «Transnational solidarities: Immigrant communities in Argentina facing the Great War»
  • Dr. Jan Pajor (University of Lodz) : «The United States and China’s entry into World War I»
  • Dr. William Thomas Allison (Georgia Southern University, USA): «With Arms or Food? A Local View on the American Decision to Intervene in North Russia, 1918»
  • Carl-Leo Graf von Hohenthal (University of Freiburg, Germany) : «Ireland in Palestine? Jews, Arabs, Britons and new perspectives on the fight for the future of Mandate Palestine»
  • Dr. Takuma Melber (University of Heidelberg) : «Alle Menschen werden Brüder – German soldiers in Japanese war captivity and the First World War in Far East»
  • Dr. Michael Auwers (University of Antwerp) : «Away with Neutrality. The ‘Colonial’ Coup of Belgian Diplomacy during the First World War»
  • Dr. Yaron Jean (Sapir College, Negev, Israel) : «The Sounds of the Invisible: Warfare Technology, Obliteration and Global Wars»
  • Elisabeth Marie Piller (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) : «The Great War and the Power of Neutrality: The Commission for Relief in Belgium and the Global Public ‘Conscience’»
  • Dr. Martin Arndt (Zagreb) : «Jews between the Frontlines»
  • Aliaksandr Piahanau (Université of Toulouse) : «A Separate Peace with Hungary? The Magyar Peace Feelers at the Beginning of WW1 (1914—15)”
  • Martin Deuerlein (University of Tübingen) : «Global War, International Relations and the Question of Order in an Interdependent World»
  • Alvine Henriette Assembe Ndi (Université de Yaoundé I – Cameroun) : «Chronique d’une coopération sous fond de rivalités : la France et la Grande-Bretagne au Kamerun pendant la grande guerre (1914-1919)»
  • Radhika Singha (Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi) : «Terminating the war, conserving its trace: India 1918-21»