Call for the Annual Workshop of the Vienna Global History Group

(FSP Globalgeschichte)

Annual Global History Workshop:

Temporalities

University of Vienna, June 8^th, 2026

The Vienna Global History Group dedicates the academic year 2025/26 to the topic of Temporalities. Collaborating with scholars in the across various disciplines, we aim to broaden the question of how temporality is defined and operated in academic research and in history. Questioning established perspectives on temporality can shed a new perspective on the coexistence of multiple, uneven, and intersecting temporal frameworks in global history.

To explore this broad field, the Vienna Global History Group will hold a workshop at the University of Vienna on June 8^th, 2026. We call for papers addressing methodological and theoretical perspectives on temporal dimensions of Global History.  This could include interrogating how time shapes social processes and addressing how historical actors conceptualize their past, present and future, as well as asking about how a global historical perspective questions standard periodization and visions of historical change.

The Vienna Global History Group welcomes contributions from the humanities, social sciences, and economics. Papers may address any world region and engage with either contemporary developments or earlier historical periods. Submissions should incorporate a global historical perspective, broadly defined. MA students, PhD candidates, and postdoctoral researchers from the University of Vienna are especially encouraged to apply.

Please send your paper proposal of a maximum of 1,000 words together with a short biography to Christian De Vito (christian.de.vito@univie.ac.at) and Emma Rabe (emma.rabe@univie.ac.at) by April 5^th, 2026. 

We are looking forward to receiving your submission!

(Im)Mobilities

13 June 2025

Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Seminarraum 1

The Vienna Global History Group dedicates the academic year 2024/25 to the topic of (im)mobilities. We aim to broaden our understanding of mobility, including the movement of people, goods, and ideas. We also want to reflect on the methodological concerns of how to grant immobile and disconnected people and phenomena greater attention in global history.

To explore this broad field, the Annual Workshop of the Vienna Global History Group addresses different forms of (im)mobility from a global perspective. Topics include human mobility in various forms as well as the mobility of ideas and concepts, or of objects and materials. Papers tackle (im)mobility both on an empirical and on a methodological/theoretical level and therefore contribute to an overarching conversation regarding the foundational role of mobility in global history and its limits.

The workshop is organized in cooperation with the Research Cluster State, Politics, and Governance in Historical Perspective of the Doctoral School of Historical and Cultural Studies.