In April 2025, the GLO project will hold its first academic workshop, entitled “Global Governance Reform: Perspectives from the Twentieth Century”. The event will take place at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo. It is being organized by Daniel Gorman, Professor of History and Co-PI of GLO. This is an in-person event; if you are interested in attending, please contact Matthew Robertshaw.
The workshop explores the efforts of different types of movements and actors in the twentieth century to reform or transform international institutions. It will take across two days; see below for the programme.
Workshop Programme
Thursday, April 10
9:30 Opening (Daniel Gorman and Daniel Laqua)
9:45 Panel 1: The UN and the Politics of War and Peace (chair: Daniel Gorman)
- Sophie Scott-Brown (Northumbria University) – Leveraging Trust and Emergency Positivity: The Sahara Anti Nuclear Protest and the United Nations, 1959–1960
- Volker Prott (Aston University) – Trust and Depoliticization: The Rise and Fall of United Nations Conflict Management after 1945
10h45 Break
11h00 Panel 2: Transnational Civil Society (chair: Daniel Manulak)
- Lia Brazil (University of Notre Dame) – Red, White, Black and Blue Crosses and Crescents: Challenging the Authority of the International Committee of the Red Cross
- Andrew Johnston (Carleton University) – Humanity above Nations: WILPF’s Feminist Critique of the League of Nations
- Richard Huzzey (Durham University) – Jubilee 2000, Mistrust, and Global Governance at the Turn of the Millennium
12h30 Lunch
14h00 Panel 3: Alternative Visions of Global Order (chair: Katherine Bruce-Lockhart)
- Matthew Robertshaw (Waterloo University) – Mandatory Trust: Haitian Delegates and the Push for Decolonization through the Mandates/Trusteeship System, 1920–1960
- Jake Hodder (Nottingham University) – African Americans, the League of Nations and the Art of Being Civilized
- Gordon Barrett (University of Manchester) – Representation and Reform? The People’s Republic of China and Global Scientific Governance
15h30 Break
16h00 Panel 4: International Political Economy (chair: Francine McKenzie)
- Raphaël Orange-Leroy (Université Nantes) – Adapting the Paradigm: Developing Countries, UNCTAD, and the IMF in the Reform of the Bretton Woods System (1964–1969)
- Sandy Peeples (Johns Hopkins University) – Tanzania, Ujamaa and the New International Economic Order
- Christy Thornton – To Reckon with the Riot: IFI Responses to Social Protest in Historical Perspective
17h30 Day 1 Conclusion
followed by dinner
Friday, April 11
9h30 Panel 5: Rights and Legitimacies (chair: Amalia Ribi Forclaz)
- Michael Holm (Boston University) – For the Greater Good: America’s Forgotten Human Rights Moment
- Boyd van Dijk (University of Oxford) – Universalizing the Geneva Conventions and Fundamental Principles, 1960–1980
- Kofi Gunu (Boston University) – Building Up by Cutting Loose: IMF Legitimacy and the Sterling Crisis of 1976
11h00 Break
11h15 Panel 6: Democratizing Global Governance (chair: Henry Miller)
- Daniel Laqua (Northumbria University) – A ‘League of Peoples’? Socialist Internationalism and the Democratization of Global Governance
- Anne-Isabelle Richard (Leiden University) – Democratizing the Council of Europe: Decolonization by Participation
- Dena Freeman (Shanghai University) – Reform and Democratization of the UN Proposals by the World Movement for World Federal Government, 1948–58
12h45 Lunch
13h45 Roundtable Discussion
15h00 Internal GLO meeting