Institute for Transnational and Spatial History

Description

Launched in 2009, the Centre for Transnational History evolved into the Institute for Transnational and Spatial History in 2014. The Institute amalgamates the expertise of professionals who study European, Asian, and North American history, along with transatlantic history from the seventeenth century to the present. Individual and collective projects fuse comparative, transnational, and global perspectives.

Transnational history questions whether modern Europe can be considered merely a sum of its national histories and historiographies. It explores the extent of influence and interconnectivity amongst European societies since the late-eighteenth century, including the impact of colonies and other non-European regions. Transnational history is viewed as an open approach, enabling the amalgamation of various approaches such as comparative history, global history, and the history of the transfer and circulation of ideas. It allows for the study of the flow of objects and people across time and space, often crossing borders between nations, states, and cultures.

Spatial history comes in several forms. It can involve a heightened attention to the physicality and materiality of spaces, an analysis of spaces as imagined and discursively constructed, and the exploration of practices of territorialisation. It also involves the use of maps and computational methods, like 'historical GIS', for generating new insights and questions.

At the School of History at St Andrews, numerous historians share a strong interest in comparative and transnational history and in recontextualising European history. Their research and teaching activities cover the period from c.1750 to the late-twentieth century and geographical areas including Germany, France, Switzerland, Great Britain, Italy, Poland, Russia, South-Eastern Europe, Iran, Northern Africa, and North America. Current transnational research projects include travel writing and the circulation of knowledge, the history of borders and border regions, intellectual history, spatial history, the history of NGOs, popular culture, relations between Europe and Iran, and the Mediterranean as a European contact zone, among others.

The Institute offers a variety of courses combining comparative and transnational approaches to history at the undergraduate level. They also offer master-level modules such as 'Crossing Borders: European History in Transnational Perspectives' and 'Global History, Globalisation, and Its Histories'. In 2015, the Institute introduced an MA programme in Transnational, Global and Spatial History.

The Institute organises lectures, research seminars on comparative and transnational history, and hosts conferences and workshops. It also introduced manuscript workshops in 2016, where draft works are pre-circulated among Institute members for feedback and discussion.

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

Founding year

2009

Contact details

On the map

Go to larger version of this map

Categorisation

Type

Project Tags

University affiliation(s)

University of St Andrews
NA
St Andrews
KY16 9AJ