Last Monday, we were pleased to have Stephen Legg (University of Nottingham) join us for our third Close Reading session.

As a group, we discussed a chapter of Stephen's book manuscript: Constituting India in Interwar London: Colonialism, Democracy and the Round Table Conference. This book is a product of his AHRC funded project "Conferencing the International: a cultural and historical geography of the origins of internationalism (1919-1939)" that studied liberal, radical and imperial forms of internationalism as manifested in their conference spaces in the years between the wars. 

The chapter we read together, "The Speech Factory", examines the formal heart of the Round Table Conference, which took place at St James’s Palace. The chapter examines the composition of this space and the way it became "a global site of imperial projection". The chapter and the ensuing discussion provided plenty of food for thought about the role of space at international conferences.

This was the final Close Reading session on new histories of internationalism for this academic year. The sessions will resume in October.