Sponsored by Transimperialpasts Network and hosted by the CONCEPTA Network, “Imperial Powers in Transition: Cultural and Institutional Dynamics of the Portuguese, Hispanic, Hapsburg, Ottoman and Russian Empires, 18th-19th Centuries” will take place Jan. 18-22, 2027, at the University of the Basque Country (Campus Vitoria) in Álava, Spain.
This winter school is designed as an intensive course on the cultural and institutional history of five continental European empires during the transition to modernity: the Luso-Brazilian, Hispanic, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian.
The school has two main objectives:
- to train post-graduate and PhD students in a topic of relevance not only from a historiographical perspective but also designed to provide a historical understanding of the current drift toward a neo-imperial geopolitics on a global scale.
- to introduce post-graduate students to interdisciplinary research in historical studies, with a central focus on conceptual history.
The initiative brings together cultural history, imperial history, the history of political and economic thought, the history and theory of time, transnational history, comparative history, and disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, and international relations. Conceptual history serves as the link and mediator between these different fields.
The course is conceived as an immersive experience in both metropolitan and colonial imperial cultures between the 18th and 19th centuries, combining lectures by specialists and thematic roundtables. The lectures will be given by 13 professors, five from the coordinating university and eight from other universities in Europe and Latin America.
Each lecture will last approximately 40-45 minutes, followed by a question-and-answer session and dialogue with the students, for a total of 1.5 hours. There will be a half-hour break between lectures. Roundtables will last 1.5 hours. The first will be dedicated to student introductions and sharing expectations about the school. The final roundtable will be dedicated to a joint evaluation of the school and the selection of a topic for the final paper.
The activity is designed in a hybrid format and will be conducted entirely in English. Sessions will be recorded, but not placed in public repositories.
The maximum number of students is 15. To ensure in-person attendance, the school will offer five travel and accommodation grants for registered students.
Registered students must attend the lectures and actively participate in the roundtables. At the end of the program, students will choose a topic for a paper, which will be supervised by the convenors of the activity. Students will be given a certificate of attendance and the possibility of obtaining 1 ECTS credit for the activity. The students who produce the four best-ranked papers will be invited to submit a paper proposal to the 27th Annual International Conference on the History of Concepts, to be held in Vitoria in September 2027.
Applicants must provide a one-page Statement of Interest describing their research interests in general and relating to which of the empires covered in the school, their projects and other merits and activities, together with a brief, one-page CV. Applications are to be sent to transimperialpasts_network@ehu.es.
Student selection will be announced by Dec. 1, 2026.
For more information, see https://transimperialpasts.com/events/the-history-of-imperial-powers-in-the-passage-to-modernity-concepts-and-dynamics.