Empire & Economics

This major two-day international conference at the University of Johannesburg is intended as the primary research event of the first year of Prof Lawrence Hamilton and Prof Peter Vale's NRF Blue Skies Award. The conference is intended to enable thinking about how the formation of the South African state and those of its neighbours were influenced by a series of political and economic ideas and institutions present in the global discourse of various historical periods, and how these ideas and institutions were re-configured in response to local contexts and concerns. 

The conference is intended to assist in overcoming the tendency in South African liberal and Marxist historiography to focus on very specific historical events and time periods. It will therefore include historians, political scientists, philosophers, and legal and economic theorists who have studied these ideas and influences without particular reference to the southern African context alongside their colleagues who have begun to think about these ideas and institutions in the context of the region.

Panel sessions: Property & Colonialism; Public Debt and Imperialism; Fort Hare as an Institution of Empire; The Political Economy of Decolonisation; Representation, Public Debt and Democratic Politics
Keynote speakers include: David Boucher (Cardiff),Peter Cain (Sheffield), Saul Dubow (Sussex), Bill Freund (Kwa-Zulu Natal), Ian Phimister (Sheffield),Ajume Wingo (Boulder, Colorado)

Venue: University of Johannesburg, Conference Rooms 1&2, School of Tourism & Hospitality, Bunting Road Campus, Auckland Park

Application: Due to space constraints, those interested in attending the conference should send their CVs (with updated contact information) to: [email protected] before the 10th of Dec 2011. Please put 'Empire & Economics Conference Application' as the email subject. Those interested in attending the conference dinner at a possible small fee on the 5th of Jan 2012 should also indicate this in their email.