Toynbee Prize Foundation Names Aden Knaap Executive Director
The Toynbee Prize Foundation has elected Aden Knaap, a PhD candidate in History and the Knox Fellow at Harvard University, as the second Executive Director of the Toynbee Prize Foundation, effective June 1, 2017.
Knaap, a native of Australia, received his BA in History (Hons I) from the University of Sydney in 2014, and an LLB (equivalent to a JD) from Sydney Law School in 2016. Prior to beginning his doctoral education at Harvard, he was a research associate with the Laureate Research Program in International History at the University of Sydney.
Knaap focuses in his work on international and imperial law, world government and international order, and the League of Nations and the United Nations. The author of several pieces in publications such as the European Journal of International Law, History in the Making, Cosmopolites, and Honest History, he is at present working on several projects, including, in his words:
a book project on the history of international adjudication and arbitration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; a second project on conceptions of world federalism among individuals and civil society organizations of the early to mid-twentieth century, exploring questions of sovereignty, territoriality and jurisdiction; and an article on how early Australian internationalists adopted and adapted European ideas of the League of Nations, in a process I term 'domesticating' internationalism.'
In assuming the position of Executive Director, Knaap succeeds the Foundation's first Executive Director, Timothy Nunan, who has held the position since 2014. Under Nunan's leadership, the Foundation significantly expanded its web presence through the establishment of the Global History Blog and the Global History Forum. Additionally, the Foundation's site now features contributions from an international team of Editors-at-Large. Nunan, formerly an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, is since 2016 an Assistant Professor and Freigeist Fellow at the Center for Global History at the Freie Universität Berlin.
As the process of transition proceeds this spring, we hope to make further announcements about changes and new features to the Toynbee Prize Foundation's website.