Poster Designs: Begum Zorlu

We are holding an international conference open to academics, staff and students. Please find the information here and below.

Conference Description

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.

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 [PDF].