Research

The twentieth century has seen unprecedented violence, not only on the battlefields in Europe and Asia, but also against civilians who suffered large-scale deportation and forced migration in both European and Asian theatres of the Second World War. Many members of the ERC GLORE team presented at the workshop ‘Mapping the end of empire: coming to terms with the Pacific War’, held at the University of Cambridge on 10 September 2024. Focusing on Shanghai as a hub of displacement and departure in the 1940s, this workshop scrutinised the global connections which linked ex-Nazi Germany (today Germany and Austria) to Asia, and the uncertainties that refugees and international organisations encountered during the episode of post-WWII resettlement. Aware that Shanghai, politically divided during the colonial era (until 1943), had a pre-war and wartime history of offering protection to Asian and European refugees, we pay attention to the racialised categorisation, the evolution of infrastructure that sustained global resettlement, the fragility of and limitations of refugees who wished to exert agency, and in a longer timeframe, their lives after departure from Shanghai. The workshop was generously funded by the DAAD Cambridge hub, co-convened by Kerstin von Lingen (Vienna) and Barak Kushner (Cambridge).

The twentieth century has seen unprecedented violence, not only on the battlefields in Europe and Asia, but also against civilians who suffered large-scale deportation and forced migration in both European and Asian theatres of the Second World War. Many members of the ERC GLORE team presented at the workshop ‘Mapping the end of empire: coming to terms with the Pacific War’, held at the University of Cambridge on 10 September 2024. Focusing on Shanghai as a hub of displacement and departure in the 1940s, this workshop scrutinised the global connections which linked ex-Nazi Germany (today Germany and Austria) to Asia, and the uncertainties that refugees and international organisations encountered during the episode of post-WWII resettlement. Aware that Shanghai, politically divided during the colonial era (until 1943), had a pre-war and wartime history of offering protection to Asian and European refugees, we pay attention to the racialised categorisation, the evolution of infrastructure that sustained global resettlement, the fragility of and limitations of refugees who wished to exert agency, and in a longer timeframe, their lives after departure from Shanghai. The workshop was generously funded by the DAAD Cambridge hub, co-convened by Kerstin von Lingen (Vienna) and Barak Kushner (Cambridge).

Between 29th June and 1st July 2023, the Seventh European Congress on World and Global History took place in The Hague, Netherlands. Under the title “Conflict and Inequity, Peace and Justice: Local, Regional and International Perspectives” this international conference provided the space to promote interdisciplinary exchange and spark discussions on a diverse spectrum of topics.

The inter-project workshop “Introduction to GIS (ArcGisPRO) for Historical Studies offered historians from the projects GLORE and Negotiating Migration Regimes conceptual, theoretical and practical insights into working with geoinformation systems. The focus was on the one hand on the presentation of examples from research practice and on the other hand on the practical application based on exercise examples.