Security and Conflict in Historical Context

The conflicts and security issues that dominate current global policy agendas, such as Gaza, Iran, Ukraine, Darfur, Pakistan, and others, are most often studied as contemporary events, analysed through recent policy decisions of institutional actors and stakeholders. This panel seeks to go beyond contemporary developments and focus on the historical context of security- and conflict-related themes. It addresses the repercussions of the fall of the Soviet Bloc, international and domestic dimensions of Cold War superpower competition, the rivalries between great and small powers that shaped the Second World War, the military and diplomatic decisions that played a part in the First World War, the legacies of interwar nationalisms, and the impact of the Long Nineteenth Century’s imperial expansion on the formation of nations, economies and identities across the Global South. The objective is to bring together historically grounded case studies on security and conflict and to encourage comparative engagement both within individual papers or across the panel as a whole, which could tell us more about the dynamics of conflict escalation and deescalation.