States of Statelessness

An intensive workshop on international history run by the University of Sydney has brought postgraduate research students from Harvard, Birkbeck College (University of London), the École Normale Supérieure (University of Paris), Oxford, Bristol and Leeds to Australia to join students from the University of Sydney, ANU, Queensland, and La Trobe.

The workshop looked at the topic ’State of Statelessness’, and invited students to discuss and reflect on each others’ historical research, focusing on ways of seeing beyond the state and beyond the nation.

Isabella Jackson from the University of Bristol is researching the international settlements in Shanghai between 1900 and 1943.

"States of Statelessness is about transnational history which is a quite well-established area, but still new enough that a lot of work needs to be done," she said."It’s about viewing the world by moving away from old-fashioned views that were bounded by the nation-state to look at things that cross national borders."

Isabella’s attendance at the workshop was funded by the Worldwide Universities Network, one of the supporters of the conference.

"It’s great because transnationalism is actually in practice here at the workshop. There are so many different people from different backgrounds looking at so many different fields."

Mira Siegelberg from Harvard University said the conference was a ’must’ to go to for her. Her research project, with the International History program at Harvard, concentrates specifically on statelessness.

"My research focuses on the way that the discourse around stateless people after World War I affected the rise of the idea of human rights after the war. And it looks particularly at the actors involved, international lawyers especially, in defining and understanding the implications of statelessness for international law and for the notion of human rights."

Mira says that the opportunity to gain different perspectives from other students, because of their diverse backgrounds and cultures, has been a highlight of the workshop.

"It has been really illuminating. This is only my third graduate conference and it’s been very lively.

"It’s great being in Australia and the fact that there are many students from Australian universities giving different perspectives on international history and transnational history and its growing importance in historiography. Both the professors and students have been very reflective about how they’re using those terms, and I think that’s been very helpful."

Alex Cameron-Smith, from the University of Sydney, whose research is on public health and social welfare in the twentieth century, says he has been impressed with the range of topics examined in the workshop.

"Initially I thought that the title of the conference might have made it a little narrow in subject matter, but I’ve been pleased that it has actually broadened out yet still remained coherent in terms of the topics it deals with.

"Statelessness is quite a specific term yet we have been able to hold discussions around the concept and expand out to talk about sovereignty, about the states, about identity and ideology, rather than just simple narrower questions about people that don’t have a country, refugees and so on."

The States of Statelessness workshop was the third International History Postgraduate Intensive held at the University of Sydney.