New Directions in War and History: Debating military history

The Strategic & Defence Studies Centre (ANU) and the Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society (UNSW Canberra) are pleased to announce an international conference that explores the future of military history, to be held at the Australian National University 4 – 5 February 2016.The conference aims to explore the unique position occupied by military history between the public, scholarly and professional arenas. Historians of all fields have long mined the wealth of sources that war generates, and the history of war remains popular at an undergraduate level. In Australia the centenary of the First World War has generated substantial public interest, while the Anzac myth is central to national commemoration of war and a signifier of national identity. Yet, military history arguably remains on the margin of the historical discipline in Australia, following an international trend in which the field has been considered to be traditional and conservative.

This conference aims to re-consider military and naval history as a genre of history, while also providing a forum for discussing new and innovative approaches in the field. In doing so, paper proposals that explore the limits of military history, its controversies and omissions, its utility and successes are encouraged. The conference theme, ‘New directions in war and history’, is deliberately broad so as to generate a discussion between Australian and international scholars who examine conflict through a range of cultural, social, economic and political history lenses and those scholars situated within the more traditional military history but who are exploring it in innovative ways.

The Conference Dinner will be held on Thursday 4 February at $70 per person. If you would like to attend please register on the registration page.

Link to the payment for the Conference dinner is here – Conference Dinner Payment

Please register here