The Doctoral School of History of the University of Bucharest is pleased to announce the commencement and Call for Entries of this year’s International Conference “Borders, Boundaries, Territories. Creating and Reshaping Collective Identities”, which will be held on June 8th – 9th 2018. We would like to invite PhD candidates in history, political science, international relations, economics or any other related fields, from all over the world, to an international conference about borders, barriers and frontiers as they have evolved and shaped human society throughout centuries. Transnational, regional and global perspectives are especially welcome.
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
– state-making and state dissolution: loss of territory, renouncing territory, unification, territorial expansion, annexation or acquisition by other means (eg. Louisiana Purchase);
– war, negotiation and peace treaties;
– separatism, secession, nationalism, the legacy of violence in regards to borders;
– political philosophy and ideology: anarchy, libertarianism, social contract theory, property laws etc;
– fluidity of borders, migration, mobility, border security, border regions;
– economic impact of borders: political division of territory, international organizations, trade barriers (tariffs, embargoes, protectionism), economic transnational activities (remittances, transnational corporations, corporate networks), political economy;
– transnational crimes and transnational organized crime (human trafficking, people smuggling, arms & drug trafficking, sex slavery, terrorism), international law & cross-border conflict;
– social and behavioural borders, identity politics, civil rights and intersectionality, symbolic borders (eg. the Iron Curtain).
Abstracts should be 250 – 300 words long and are not limited to any historical period or region. Interested PhD students are invited to submit their abstracts, along with an academic CV, at sdi.unibuc@gmail.com no later than April 15th. The results of the selection process will be available online at (www.istorie.unibuc.ro), on the official Facebook page of the Conference (https://www.facebook.com/sdi.unibuc/) and communicated via e-mail until May 2nd. There is no participation fee. Accommodation and meals will be provided for participants coming from outside Bucharest, but they are expected to cover their own travel costs. The Conference will take place at the Faculty of History (University of Bucharest) and all participants will receive a diploma attesting their contribution.
Additionally, at the participants’ request, their papers will be published in a special number of the Romanian Journal of History and International Studies in exchange for a publication fee of 50 RON. Those interested will be required to register with the journal and submit their manuscript on http://rjhis.ro/ before September 1st 2018.