16th Annual London Graduate Conference in the History of Political Thought
Keynote speaker: Dr. Faridah Zaman (Oxford)
Location: Room 2.06, Cheng Kin Ku Building, 54 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, LSE
Date: Thursday 19th-Friday 20th June, 2025
Ideas are central to the history of political thought, but they rarely emerge from a vacuum. Histories of political thought once portrayed ideas as free-floating answers to eternal and perennial questions; but just as ideas cannot be properly understood without placing them in time and historical context, so too must we examine how they function in and respond to the physical specificities. Meanwhile, many of us are accustomed to thinking about politics in terms of the state, with debates of this kind forming one of the central motifs within the history of political thought since its very beginning. But there is more to the spatial history of ideas than simply the territorial bounds of the modern nation-state: concepts of space have been used to explain human history and sociopolitical development; to organise models for new and ideal societies; to depict the precise workings of a political system; and to orientate us towards future goals.
The physical dimensions of the state have varied wildly down the years: in classical Greece and India, it was a bounded city; in Rome and China, a universal empire; medieval South Asian and Mesoamerican worlds saw international systems within a broader cultural ecumene; and Europe and the Islamic world perceived the state as an evolving tension between spiritual and temporal authorities. Early modernity saw the emergence of new empires, ‘gunpowder’ and colonial alike, as well as the creation – perhaps more in theory than in reality – of the territorially coherent and sovereign ‘Westphalian’ state. Both, in turn, found themselves changed by the spectre of nationalism, which posited a fundamental and eternal link between cultural and linguistic groups and the land they dwelt upon. This is not to say that the state has not faced a vast array of spatial alternatives and challenges, from regional integration and federalism (including anarchist federalism) to localism, from international organisations to multinational corporations, and perhaps a single world government to span or even reach beyond the earth itself.
Nor have the spaces of politics remained constant. From the classical agora and the modern town square, to the monasteries of the medieval world and the phalanstères of utopian socialist dreams, to global trade routes, village communes, grand palaces, and humble homes – throughout human history, the spaces in which political activity takes place have fundamentally shaped the way that politics has occurred, and the ideas that have been produced. So, too, have the labels we have given to spaces: from grand constructs like ‘the West’, ‘the Orient’, ‘the Balkans’, and many more, to smaller abstractions like the city, the legislative chamber, the barricade, and the border, conceptions of space are never invoked without a host of normative implications. We cannot understand the world without understanding states; but we also cannot understand states without understanding the spaces they exist in, rely on, and create in turn. We spend a great deal of time in the history of political thought asking questions of ‘what’, ‘why’, and ‘how’; but we must also remember to ask ‘where’.
This conference will explore the ways in which conceptions of the state and ideas of space and place, particularly as applied to the realm of political thought, have been presented, explored, challenged, and understood throughout history. We invite submissions from graduate students in history and related disciplines (even if you do not necessarily view your research as falling within the traditional bounds of the history of political thought), working on all periods and places. We especially welcome submissions seeking to push the boundaries of the history of political thought, whether by focusing on lesser-known thinkers, adopting a new approach to well-explored works, or building on other strands of history or other academic disciplines.
Proposals for papers and panels may wish to consider the following themes:
- Alternative structures to the state, such as, but not limited to: religious communities; transnational networks; or transient groups
- Different spaces in which politics/political thought takes place
- Depictions of states and their alternatives in literature and political writing
- Different conceptions of states of being
- How diverse groups have conceived of ‘space’ in the history of political thought
- How local communities interact with, and perhaps evade, the state
- The political connotations of specific spaces
- Novel methodologies or sources to tackle issues of the state and its spaces
To apply, please email a proposal and an academic CV to historyofpoliticalthoughtnet@gmail.com. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words for papers of 20 minutes in length. Abstracts must be submitted by Friday, 14th March, 2025, and successful applicants will be notified by Wednesday, 30th April 2025.
Please note that as this is a graduate conference, we can only consider proposals from applicants who have not yet been awarded a doctorate, and priority will be given to those who have not previously presented at this conference.