The Joint Center for History and Economics, University of Cambridge and Harvard University, and Columbia World Projects at Columbia University are delighted to announce their new online seminar series Barriers & Borders.

The seminar puts a spotlight on exciting new research that brings sustained conceptual, analytical, and historical attention to the causes and consequences of constructing (or reconstructing) barriers and borders.

Each seminar consists of a conversation between two scholars. The introductions to the books discussed in this seminar will be pre-circulated among registered participants. Audio recordings of the events will be posted shortly after each event. The first event on Border-Making: State-Building and Geopolitics will take place on October 7, 2021. Further information can be found below. Please register here for the Zoom link.

Thursday, October 7, 2021

Border-Making: State-Building and Geopolitics

9 am PDT (San Francisco), 12pm EST (New York), 5pm BST (London), 6pm CEST (Paris)

Thomas Simpson (University of Cambridge)

The Frontier in British India: Space, Science, and Power in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2021)

Sören Urbansky (German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.)

Beyond the Steppe Frontier: A History of the Sino-Russian Border (Princeton University Press, 2020)

Moderators: Franziska Exeler (Cambridge/FU Berlin), Kalyani Ramnath (Harvard)

Subsequent seminars will take place on December 2, 2021, February 3, 2022, and April 7, 2022.