UMR SIRICE, the Univ. Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and the UCLouvain Saint-Louis Brussels; Laurence Badel, Peter Hallama, and Sophie Jacquot  (Web)

Time: 19.-20.06.2025
Venue: Paris – Aubervilliers
Proposals by: 15.12.2024

The workshop focuses on the intersections between the history of international relations, the history of European integration, women’s and gender history, European studies, and gender studies. Since the early 21st century, historiography on international relations and European integration has undergone profound transformations, enabling the integration of a gender perspective. At the same time, women’s and gender history increasingly adopts a transnational, even global, perspective. The redefinition of concepts such as “international relations” and “diplomacy,” the diversification of actors – both male and female – and a new understanding of the spaces of international interaction have allowed scholars to move beyond a traditional political history and write a social and cultural history of diplomatic actors and practices.
These historiographical shifts have facilitated the writing of a history of international relations and, to a lesser extent, European integration that incorporates both the presence of women and a gender perspective. Research has focused on the entry of women into diplomacy, their access to positions within European institutions and international organizations, and the role of feminists and their transnational networks in international relations. This research has highlighted women’s participation in international relations and organizations, in formal and informal negotiations, in abolitionist, humanitarian, pacifist, and feminist movements as well as in the circulation of ideas and transnational social networks. It is now well established that women were more visible in the history of international relations and European integration than they appear in mainstream historiography and analyses of these integration processes.
Despite significant transformations in these fields of research since the late 20th century, incorporating a gender perspective into these scientific domains remains a challenge. Therefore, the workshop has two main objectives. First, it will reassess the field by discussing the theoretical and methodological challenges of approaches at the intersection of the history of international relations, European integration, gender and feminist history, European studies, and gender studies. Second, the workshop will provide a platform for debate around case studies, recent or ongoing empirical work. It is explicitly aimed at PhD candidates and early-career researchers.

The workshop will be structured around three main research themes:

Tools, Concepts, and Approaches.
How can we study and bring to light the power dynamics and domination, but also cooperation, that structure international politics and its history? One of the objectives of this workshop is to reflect on the contributions of a gender perspective to the study of international relations, European integration, and their history. This will involve examining the historiographical shifts underway in writing the history of European and trans/inter/national cooperation from a gender perspective. It will also look at how gender studies have contributed to expanding and enriching not only the range of analytical objects in European studies, international relations, and their history but also the theoretical and methodological frameworks used to approach them.
What critiques can be made of dominant theories and approaches to uncover the main mechanisms of gender domination? What methodological innovations and hybridizations can help to grasp the role of women and feminists as constitutive elements of international and European political spaces? What analytical and conceptual shifts are needed to think about the production of gender and its effects in these spaces?

International Spaces: Mobility, Investment, and Legitimization
A broad understanding of international spaces is essential to make visible the women who have participated in international relations while remaining excluded from decision-making spaces for a long time. Recent works, such as that of Mona L. Siegel on the 1919 Peace Conference, have demonstrated the importance of decentering and broadening our perspective to grasp the mobility between different international spaces, from the most official to the most unofficial, and their gradual investment by women and feminists. This requires considering the diversity of actors in these spaces, some of whom enjoy official recognition, while others are in search of legitimacy. Writing history in this way necessitates close attention to the interactions between official and unofficial international spaces, the interplay between local, national, European, and international levels, and therefore to practices of negotiation rather than just their outcomes. It is not simply the “impact” of women and feminists in international relations that interests us, but primarily their actions and proposals, their room for manoeuvre, and their agency.

Professions
Finally, the workshop aims to deepen reflection on women’s international professions, their structuring, professionalization, and development. International public servant, ambassador or diplomat, conference interpreter, translator, librarian, secretary – these are professions that have been the subject of preliminary studies, but which we hope to see multiply.

The workshop invites historians, political scientists, sociologists, and researchers from other disciplines whose work focuses on women and feminists as actors in European and international relations in the 20th century. The scientific committee will pay particular attention to proposals offering methodological and theoretical innovations, including from postcolonial or intersectional perspectives. Geographically, Europe is at the heart of this workshop, but in a broad sense, encompassing both its margins and its relations with the world.

Proposals for presentations (one page) accompanied by a brief CV should be sent by December 15, 2024, to peter.hallama@univ-paris1.fr. The working languages of the workshop will be French and English. The organizers will cover travel expenses as much as possible.

Organizers: Laurence Badel (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne / UMR SIRICE), Peter Hallama (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne / UMR SIRICE), Sophie Jacquot (UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles / Chaire Jean Monnet EUGENDERING)

Scientific committee: Pascale Barthélémy (EHESS / IMAF), Anne-Laure Briatte (Sorbonne Université / UMR SIRICE), Elena Danescu (Université du Luxembourg / EUI Florence), Jane Freedman (Université Paris 8), Claire Lafon (EUGENDERING / Université des Femmes).

Kontakt: peter.hallama@univ-paris1.fr

Website (Web)

Quelle: HSozKult