Congratulations to our Research Associate, Dr. Thomas Gidney, for being awarded the prestigious Ambizione career grant by the Swiss National Sciences Foundation (SNSF) for his four-year project '“Should I stay or should I go?” Membership and international recognition from the League to the United Nations’. This project will be jointly be hosted by the Global Governance Centre and the International History and Politics Department and will explore how the UN became, de facto, the international authority on interstate recognition , charting and comparing the UN’s contemporary mass-membership to its predecessor, the League of Nations.
More About the project
This project’s primary aim is to analyse the relationship between Latin American states and the League of Nations (1919-1945). The candidate will be expected to write a PhD dissertation on the often transitory nature of Latin American membership to the League, with states often departing the organisation. The project’s aim to is analyse to what extent such actions were carried out as a cultural-political bloc, or whether it was largely for national interests. This project feeds into the larger project led by the PI on states decisions to engage and disengage with international organisations. The candidate will be expected to carry out research for the PI in a series of archives in North and South America as well as Europe.
Click here to find out more about the project.
About Thomas Gidney
Thomas Gidney is a is a Postdoctoral Researcher in International History and Politics. He is the principal investigator for an Ambizione project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation on Membership and international recognition from the League to the United Nations.
Thomas completed his PhD in International History at the Graduate Institute. His thesis examined how British colonies were admitted as member states to the League of Nations and the politics behind why only Britain decided to “represent” its colonies internationally. It was recently published as a book entitled 'An International Anomaly: Colonial Accession to the League of Nations' by Cambridge University Press. Thomas is currently working on a SNF project at the Graduate Institute in a multiuniversity project entitled “Global Governance, Trust and Democratic Engagement in Past and Present” (GLO)
