Global History Initiative

Global History Initiative

The Global History Initiative (GHI) at Queen’s University is a research forum based at the Department of History. It provides an interactive arena for international partnership, faculty exchange, thematic conferences, graduate workshops, and multi-institutional network-building.

Drawing from the expertise of regional specialists at Queen’s, we define Global History as a critique of methodological nationalism and seek to examine those historical processes that cannot be confined within the limits of arbitrary geopolitical units. Eschewing earlier historiographical trends that unmistakably cast historical problems in the national register, our focus is on freeing history from the post-Enlightenment inheritance of agency, organizing scheme, and units of analysis.

Together we embrace the standpoint that Global History can unfold both at the macro and the micro-level, and can at once be a perspective and a subject of study. We seek to explore the local histories of global processes and the myriad ways in which the global currents shape the local forms.

The Queen’s Global History initiative is one of the two partners in the North American Global History Network (along with the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History at Harvard University) and is partnered with the Poverty Research Network at the University of Glasgow. We are in the process of establishing partnerships and exchanges with leading programs around the world.

All photographs © Amitava Chowdhury