The Graduate Institute is located in the heart of International Geneva and has strong ties to the city’s numerous international organisations. This provides the Institute’s history department access to a wealth of archives dating back to the origins of international humanitarianism and governance and makes the Institute an ideal place to study the history of international organisations.
The Graduate Institute and its partner, the Pierre du Bois Foundation for Current History, are organising an upcoming conference entitled “International Organisations and the Politics of Development: Historical Perspectives” related to this topic.
What is the focus of your research?
It focuses on humanitarian programmes in the inter-war period. I am studying the reasons why several organisations and philanthropic foundations decided to go beyond short-term relief in an attempt to address the root causes of ‘suffering’. I also have a growing interest in the history of international health movements, organisations and governance. I am currently researching the visual politics of international organisations, a rich and overlooked research area.
What sets the Graduate Institute apart from other institutions in the study of international organisations?
For historians, proximity has the considerable advantage of allowing researchers to visit the archives whenever possible. You might think of this as a minor advantage, though the simple fact of being able to spend an entire day in the archives during a semester is a privilege. More importantly however, the Institute offers a unique opportunity to foster critical and original studies of international organisations’ political visions and practices, rituals and protocols, tensions and cooperation. The Institute encourages the inter-disciplinary exchanges historians need to broaden their understanding of this particular object of historical enquiry. Finally, our institution enhances informal and more formal conversations between academics and diplomats, experts and practitioners, which, I believe are mutually beneficial.
What will be the focus of the upcoming Pierre du Bois conference?
The key theme of the conference is to look at the history of the politics and practices of development as envisioned and enforced by international organisations. Our perspective is that of the historian. We look at continuities and ruptures, at the roots of these practices during the colonial and post-colonial eras. We examine war as a catalyst for change. My co-convenor, Professor Sandrine Kott (University of Geneva) and I are persuaded that the practices of development, their failures and successes, are useful prisms through which to examine international organisations. They reveal the organisations’ stances, ideologies, culture(s) and perceptions of the world. At the same time, examining development through the lenses of international organisations allows us to break up chronologies and to access competing models.
Find out more and register for the upcoming event "International Organisations and the Politics of Development: Historical Perspectives”