Join us for this multi-day conference on rethinking the past and present of liberal internationalism.
Summary
In recent years there is a surge in scholarly debates on the origins, transformations, legacies, and applications of liberal internationalism. Although there is no consensus on the term and its analytical frame of reference, most historians trace the emergence of liberal internationalist ideology in anglophone debates on international order during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
More recently, the language of liberal internationalism has been redeployed by IR scholars as a remedy to the crisis of western liberal democracy. The time seems ripe to revisit the concept of liberal internationalism and rethink its multiple pasts and presents.
To what extent can one speak of a coherent “liberal internationalist” zeitgeist? What does “liberal internationalism” mean in different periods and in different contexts? Are there non-western liberal internationalist traditions? How has empire and nationalism shaped liberal and internationalist imaginaries? What sense to do we make of binary categories such as idealism/realism, internationalism/isolationism that have shaped the debate on liberal international institutions and politics?
The conference will bring together historians, IR scholars and political theorists to survey the field of liberal internationalism and sketch out future research directions.
You're welcome to download the conference programme.
Early Career Seminar
During the conference, there will be a lunchtime Early Career Seminar (on 12th May, 12:30 - 14:00) addressed to PhD students and early career researchers across the humanities and social sciences. If you wish to present, please send a short description of your project and CV in one page to Begum.Zorlu.2@city.ac.uk by 28 April 2023. Download the seminar flyer.
Location
Please refer to the conference programme below for detailed timings and locations. Note that 11th and 12th will be hosted at City, University of London, while the 13th will be hosted at LSE.
Conference Programme
Thursday 11 May 2023
Location: City, University of London
Venue: Oliver Thompson Lecture Theatre (C101)
9:00 - 9:30 Welcome and Introductions
9:30 - 11:00 Panel 1: Liberal Internationalism in Theory
Chair: Madura Rasaratnam
Discussant: Sasikumar Sundaram
- Christopher Ankersen (New York University): Humanity: The “Strategic Ontology” at the Heart of Liberal Internationalism
- Theo Christov (George Washington University): Who is the “Self” in “Self-Determination”?
- Ian Hurd (Northwestern University): What was Liberal Internationalism?
- Laura Kotzur and Mariam Salehi (Free University, Berlin): Mapping the Genealogy of Transformative Justice
11:00 - 11:30 Break
11:30 - 13:00 Panel 2: Empire, Liberty, and Internationalism: Nineteenth-Century Stories
Chair: Leonie Fleishman
Discussant: Giuseppe Grieco
- Talitha Ilacqua (Yale University): Santorre di Santa Rosa, Moderate Liberalism and Transnational Patriotism in Mediterranean Europe
- Tom Long (University of Warwick) and Carsten-Andreas Schulz (University of Cambridge): Benito Juárez and the Fall of Liberal Imperialism in Nineteenth Century Mexico
- Marco Mariano (University of Turin): Mr. Barrett Goes to Mexico. Pan Americanism, Arbitration, and the Imperial Roots of US Internationalism
- James D. Fry and Guillermo Coronado Aguilar (University of Hong Kong): The Role of Peace Movements in the 1899 Creation of the Permanent Court of Arbitration
13:00 - 14:00 Lunch break
14:00 - 15:30 Panel 3: Free Trade, Sanctions, and Interventions
Chair: Lise Butler
Discussant: Madura Rasaratnam
- Antony Howe (University of East Anglia): Richard Cobden and the Nineteenth-Century Liberal International ‘Tradition’
- Christopher Barker (American University in Cairo): More than A Few Words on Non-Intervention: An Updated Liberal Theory for a Post-Imperial Age
- Jan Lepeu (European University Institute): Liberal Internationalism and Sanctions: Friends or Foes?
- Phillip Dehne (St. Joseph’s University, New York): Liberal Internationalism and the Origins of Economic Sanctions
15:30 - 15:45 Break
15:45 - 17:15 Panel 4: Interwar Internationalisms
Chair and Discussant: Georgios Giannakopoulos
- Nick Kaderbhai (King’s College, London): British Social Democratic Internationalism
- Patricia Chantera-Stutte (University of Bari): The Deus Ex Machina of Liberal Internationalism: the Greek Empire, the British Commonwealth and the League of Nations in the Thought of Alfred E. Zimmern and Gilbert Murray
- Tomás Irish (Swansea University): Intellectuals, Humanitarianism and the Reconstruction of European Order After the First World War
- Jessica Reinisch (Birkbeck, University of London): Liberal Internationalism and Technocracy
17:15 - 18:30 Panel 5: Internationalism and Empire beyond Europe
Chair: Kenyia Oksamytna
Discussant: Matt Meyers
- Tomohito Baji (University of Tokyo): A Liberal Dilemma in Japanese settler-imperial theorizing: Yanaihara Tadao and the Intervention of Zionism
- Juan Pablo Scarfi (University of San Andres-CONICET): Empire, International Law, and the Foundations of Liberal Internationalism in the Americas
- Ke Ren (Holly Cross): “Liberal Internationalism as National Resistance: The Chinese League of Nations Union in Wartime”
18:30 Welcome Reception
Friday 12 May 2023
Location: City, University of London
Venue: Oliver Thompson Lecture Theatre (C101)
09:00 - 10:30 Panel 6: The American Century
Chair and Discussant: Erez Manela
- Ian Klinke (University of Oxford) and Britain Hopkins (Wellesley College): Ellen Churchill Semple’s political economy: Slavery, frontier, imperium
- Zinovia Lialiouti (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens): The ‘Other’ Wilsonians: Liberal Internationalism and the Committee on Public Information
- Grace Easterly (University of Connecticut): The International Liberal Order at Sea: US Interpretations of “Freedom of Navigation” from Wilson to Reagan
- Roberta Adelaide Modugno (Roma TRE University): The American Old Right: Against Imperialism
10:30 - 10:45 Break
10:45 - 12:15 Panel 7: Knowledge, Power, and Institutions
Chair: Sara Silvestri
Discussant: Jessica Reinisch
- Katharina Rietzler (Sussex University): A Year for Turning: 1948 as a Fulcrum for US Liberal Internationalism
- Sam Lebovic (George Mason University): Present at the Non-Creation: The Failure to Institutionalize Liberal Internationalism in the 1940s
- Ahmed Waqas Waheed (National University of Science and Technology, Pakistan): The Liberal International Order and Militarized Knowledge: The Construction of “Pakistan” through US Elite Think-tank Network
- Georgios Giannakopoulos (City, University of London) and Anna Ross (University of Warwick): Liberty, Internationalism, and Imperial Transformations: James Headlam-Morley in Paris
12:15 - 14:15 Lunch break
12:30 - 14:00 Lunchtime Early Career Seminar: Nationalism, Internationalism and the Liberal World Order
Location: City, University of London
Venue: FG05
For more details see here
14:15 - 15:30 Panel 8: International Organisations
Chair and Discussant: Thomas Davies
- Nicole Albrecht (Birkbeck, University of London): Dr. Andrija Stampar: the significance of ‘peasant internationalism’ in the context of the LNHO’s health initiatives 1930-1939
- Kseniya Oksamytna (City, University of London) and Alana O’Malley (Leiden University): (Un)doing the Liberal International Order: Race, Class, and Order-Making in the UN
- Maha Ali (Leiden University): Renegotiating Rights at the United Nations – the Afro-Asian Chronicle
15:30 - 15:45 Break
15:45 - 17:00 Panel 9: Race and Liberal Internationalism
Chair and Discussant: Inderjeet Parmar
- Gili Kliger (Harvard University): “An Invidious Distinction”: Race, Reparations, and the Liberal International Order
- Jake Hodder (University of Nottingham): The League of Nations, Pan-African Congress and the Racial Limits of Liberal Internationalism
- Owen Brown (Northwestern University): The Liberal International Order of White Sovereignty
17:00 - 18:30 Panel 10: Decolonisation and Cold War Internationalisms
Chair and Discussant: Alanna O’Malley
- Rosalind Parr (University of Wolverhampton): Women’s Internationalism and ‘The Spirit of Bandung’: the Asian-African Conference of Women, Colombo, 1958
- Volker Prott (Aston University): Decolonisation and the Transformation of Liberal Internationalism
- Michelle Carmody (KU Leuven): Making Amnesty’s Internationalism: the Evolution of Non-Governmental Liberal Imaginaries, 1962-1982
19:00 Conference Social: Drinks and Pizza at the Dame Alice Owen pub
Saturday 13 May 2023
Location: London School of Economics
Venue: Marshal Building (MAR), 2.04
09:30 - 11:00 Panel 11: Anti-Liberal Internationalisms
Chair and discussant: Patricia Chiantera-Stutte
- Arnab Dutta (University of Groningen): The Proposal of an “Oriental League of Nations”, the
Greater India Society, and the Resonance of Liberal Internationalism in British Bengal, 1920s–
40s - Martin Kristoffer Hamre (Free University Berlin): Concepts of “liberal internationalism” as the
Antagonist of Internationally Operating Fascist Organizations in the 1930s - Sandra Ricker (European University Institute): Internationalism as Realpolitik – German
Strategic Engagement with the League of Nations After Imperial Collapse, 1918-1933
11:00 - 11:30 Break
11:30 - 13:00 Panel 12: Challenging the Rules-Based Order
Chair and Discussant: Aaron McKeil
- Sasikumar Sundaram (City, University of London): Rhetoric of Crisis of Liberal Internationalism: Power of Appropriation for Progress
- Benjamin Miller (University of Haifa): Explaining the Rising Challenges to the International Liberal Order
- Dani Solomon (SOAS, University of London): China and The Practices and the Language of Liberal Internationalism: Contesting what it Means to be Liberal
- Éric Pomès and M. Grandpierron (Catholic University of Vendee): Russian and Chinese Conceptions of The Existing Liberal International Order and their Proposed Alternative to it
13:00 - 14:00 Lunch break
14:00 - 15:00 Panel 14: Is “Liberal Internationalism” Useful Today?
Chair and Discussant: Katharina Rietzler
- Alexander Evans (London School of Economics): From Liberalism to the Like-minded
- Matthew Alan Hill (Liverpool John Moores University): Exploring How Different Liberalisms and Liberal Internationalisms can be Mainstreamed
15:00 - 15:15 Break
15:15 - 16:15 Special closing lecture
Chair: Aaron McKeil
- Patrick O. Cohrs (University of Florence): Grand Aspirations, Harsh Double Standards - and Learning Processes? Liberal Internationalism in the Long Twentieth Century
16:15 - 16:30 Closing remarks
Christopher Coker (London School of Economics)
Inderjeet Parmar (City, University of London)
Note: The presentations well be based on pre-circulated papers. If you wish to attend the conference e-mail Begum Zorlu at: Begum.Zorlu.2@city.ac.uk
Attendance at City events is subject to our terms and conditions.