New Atlas of Global History Institutions
Followers of the Toynbee Prize Foundation will recall that we unveiled this current version of our website this autumn after extensive revision and collaboration with the fantastic staff at George Mason University's Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. Along with that re-design has come new features, like our periodical Interviews with Global Historians.
As we continue to expand the site's functionality, we're happy to announce a new page–an "atlas" of global history institutions that you can either find here or via the drop-down menu under "Participate," in the top-right hand corner of your browser window.
A bit of background: during recent brain-storming sessions, we at the Toynbee Foundation realized that while almost any academic discipline today is international in scope, with researchers from different countries interacting with one another, the challenges and opportunities of international connection for the discipline of global history are especially prominent. Historians of the United States or Germany, to take two examples, might naturally cluster around research institutions in those respective countries. But how does a discipline grow and find opportunities for cross-fertilization when its subject potentially includes nothing less than the world itself?
Likewise, scholars of global history may find themselves wishing to work with colleagues in multiple national contexts; or recent graduates from countries with less well-developed institutions for global history may find themselves wanting to pursue Master's or doctoral-level work at more well-established centers. In light of all of these challenges, it's obviously important for global historians to know where to find one another–to know the topography of the discipline.
Hence, we created this interactive map of global history institutions. It works like this. Representatives of institutions can use the online form to input information about their program–its name, its location, a URL, and a short description. The map will then automatically update itself to include that research center. Users then can consult the map to see where the closest research institute to themselves is located.
We have already input a few entries to populate the map, but representatives of institutions are welcome to input their institutions' details themselves. With time, we look forward to the world of centers appearing on the map. And it may eventually be possible to link individual entries on the main blog on the Foundation's home page to links for respective institutions–so that our interview with Vanessa Ogle, for example, gives you the option to learn more about global history at the University of Pennsylvania.
Check it out here, and make sure to solicit your colleagues to include their institutions in the map!