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I.3.13. Organization and launching of the research project “Global history – non-European contexts of the Modern Word”

IDUB Programme Objective(s)

  • I.1. Supporting talented scientists in building their positions in world science
  • I.2 Increasing the publication and implementation capacity for the results of research carried out at the University of Warsaw, in the most widely recognised periodicals and publishing houses
  • I.3 Support for the creation of research programmes and teams that will become future centres of excellence
  • II.3 Improving the capacity to cooperate by increasing research capability

Name of POB/activity group

Description

Objectives

The objective of this activity is to create a research team to stimulate dialogue between the scientific community at the University of Warsaw and leading research centres of “global history” – which has been the fastest growing field of historiography in the last 20 years – and also to integrate the research that has already been carried out in this area in the various departments at UW. It seems realistic that Warsaw will become the strongest centre for global history studies between Berlin and Moscow.

Justification

The creation of a centre for the study of history and global anthropology will provide an attractive platform for young researchers to exchange experiences, which will facilitate contact with leading foreign centres and international authorities. While in global history centres have been developed in Western Europe (especially in the UK, the Netherlands, and Portugal), they are much smaller in Central Europe, with Berlin being the only powerful centre “near” Warsaw (smaller initiatives have emerged in Vienna, Prague, and Stockholm; Moscow has great potential, but so far the focus has been on specialised, regional studies with a linguistic-historical profile, rather than global history). By recruiting new researchers through open competitions (who will be associated with important publications and who operate well in international settings), developing a foreign exchange programme, and finally by attracting international students, we have a chance bring a new profile to research and teaching at the University of Warsaw, which is more dynamic and international than ever before.

Tasks or projects within the tasks

  1. The creation of the Global History and Anthropology Research Centre of the Faculty of History at the University of Warsaw – a research team that includes employees of the University of Warsaw, among them scholars from other faculties (the Faculty of Archaeology, the Faculty of Artes Liberales, the Faculty of Culture and Arts, the Faculty of Oriental Studies and the Faculty of Pedagogy). The team would provide a forum for the exchange of experiences, in various areas of non-European studies, such as various disciplines of the humanities and social sciences. In particular, this would stimulate the involvement of young researchers and doctoral candidates in the most important debates on world science, by facilitating participation in workshops and conferences abroad (through microgrants) or organising events at the University of Warsaw and improving the quality of English-language publications and grant applications (providing internal peer reviews and proof-reading before submitting a text to the target journal or submitting a grant application). The Centre would coordinate the recruitment of postdocs and their employment through open competitions, in order to increase the research and teaching potential in fields which are crucial in the framework of history and global anthropology; it will create a programme for inviting visiting professors for single lectures or for longer stays of several months, and also the following:
    1. employing a postdoc who is researching the history of South Asia for 17 months, from 1 February 2022 to 30 June 2023;
    2. hiring a postdoc who is researching environmental anthropology for 17 months;
    3. employing three reputable foreign scholars for 4-month stays, during which they would conduct research and teaching activities for doctoral and master’s students; it would be desirable have a visiting scholar who is an authority in the field of Subaltern Studies;
    4. an allowance for the two project heads, who are already employees of the University of Warsaw;
    5. an additional fund for the organisation of individual lectures by foreign guest speakers, on Global History and Anthropology;
    6. a fund for conferences and consultations for the employees included in the scope of this activity;
    7. a reserve of funds for:
      1. Proofreading costs (in case money is not available from departmental funds or individual grants),
      2. costs of purchasing literature for the libraries of the Faculty of History/the Faculty of Arts and Cultural Sciences (WNoKiS), and to cover the costs of open access publications;
    8. if additional funds are obtained, we would aim to employ an additional 2-3 postdocs who are carrying out research on the history of East Asia or South-East Asia, and Russia and/or the USSR; it is worth noting that even without employing additional staff, there will not be funds for the organisation of conferences, given the allocation of the budget.
  2. The organisation of an English-language summer school for doctoral and master’s students in 2021, and from October 2022 to June 2024, a two-year “Global History and Anthropology” Master’s degree course for domestic and foreign students. Starting from the American (and formerly Humboldtian) maxim of combining research and teaching, we assume that these initiatives will serve the following:
    1. to prepare future researchers;
    2. to integrate researchers who study global history;
    3. to make optimal use of the potential of invited guests;
    4. to increase the internationalisation and promotion of UW and to raise its visibility on a global scale.

The advantages of our programme would include:

  • a combination of a “global approach” and “local knowledge”; the opportunity to interact with specialists with knowledge about archives and source languages and/or field experience, in areas as diverse as Russia and Siberia, Mongolia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus, China and India, the Middle East, Africa, and Mesoamerica;
  • supplementing the “fixation” which is dominant in global history studies on the maritime empires of Europeans, by accounting for areas that are overlooked (such as continental Eurasia);
  • moving away from a typically-Western perspective in the discernment of non-European, Central-Eastern and Eastern European areas;
  • and finally – augmenting and deepening knowledge about Poland and the region along with the dynamic changes taking place here in relation to global processes; this is of particular importance to foreign students.

Teaching activities within the Master’s degree program would be conducted by UW employees (including newly hired postdocs) and visiting professors.

It would be desirable for foreign students from outside the EU to be exempted from tuition fees (the main recruitment criterion would then be the student’s ability, rather than social standing). In the case of students from Poland, it would be possible to recruit candidates from all over the country, and not only from Warsaw and Mazovia, by granting them at least a modest scholarship.

Coordinating body

  • Faculty of History

Entities involved in implementation

  • Faculty of History
  • Faculty of Archaeology
  • Faculty of Artes Liberales
  • Faculty of Arts and Cultural Sciences
  • Faculty of Oriental Studies
  • Faculty of Pedagogy