It's no secret that one of the most booming sub-disciplines in international and global history today is the history of development–the interaction of the rich world with the poor world before (but especially after) empire, in the hopes that poor societies could be "developed" into something better.

Followers of the Toynbee Prize Foundation's activities will be interested to know that there's an excellent in-depth feature article in Harvard Magazine–an independent journal founded by Crimson alumni–covering the state of global history today, at least through the lens of activities in Cambridge.

We're pleased to re-post a recent call for applications from the Global Humanitarianism Research Academy (GHRA), a wonderful opportunity for both PhDs and early post-docs working on the history of humanitarianism to get together for two weeks in Mainz (Germany)…

Toynbee Prize Foundation Trustee David Armitage (Harvard University) has recently authored a short tract with fellow historian of Britain Jo Guildi (Brown),  provocatively titled  The History Manifesto . "How should historians speak truth to power–and why does it matter?" ask the authors.

In the most recent issue of The New York Review of Books, Tamsin Shaw reviews Toynbee Prize Foundation Vice-President Darrin McMahon's most recent work,  Divine Fury: A History of Genius (New York: Basic Books, 2013). "Darrin McMahon's Divine Fury," writes Shaw:

A group of scholars from the Birkbeck (University of London), Sydney, and Texas Tech have recently announced a conference on the history of trafficking, smuggling, and illicit migration to take place at Birkbeck from June 18-20, 2015…

Here's an exciting opportunity for post-doctoral scholars of global history, advertised jointly by the Universities of Heidelberg, Sydney, and Basel.

Professor Dominic Sachsenmaier, a renowned scholar of Chinese and global history, will succeed Professor Raymond Grew as the President of the Toynbee Prize Foundation.

The Gerda Henkel Foundation has made available the videos of two recent lectures on global history given at the July meeting of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences'  Akademievorlesung series.

Professor Lynn Hunt of UCLA chimes in with a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education here on the role that globalization takes on in historical writing today.  "Two new developments are reshaping the way we study history," begins the piece.

It's not always easy for graduate students and post-doctoral scholars to find the right venues to present work in progress. Sometimes, graduate students can feel hesitant about making the transition from seminar paper to conference paper – and thence to dissertation or book chapter.

Critical Inquiry has just published a piece by Columbia University's Mark Mazower, titled "The End of Eurocentrism," that looks promising. The abstract for the piece follows:

The Toynbee Prize Foundation has selected Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, as the recipient of the 2014 Toynbee Prize.

Cross-Posted on the Imperial and Global Forum  … Last week, I came across two provocative blog posts, at The Junto and the Imperial and Global History Network (IGHN)…

ITHACA – Scarcely a week passes without news about the ascendance of China's currency, the renminbi. But China has a long way to go before its currency can rival – let alone displace – the US dollar as the dominant global reserve currency.