Undergraduate History Conference 2016

The 2017 Undergraduate History Conference is being held this weekend, 4 February with the theme “Identity in History” starting at 9:30 in our Old Class Library with Dr James Nott as the keynote speaker. We’ll have more to say about the conference in some postings ahead. Today Olivia Richey looks back at the conference last year in February, 2016.

I had the great honor of organizing the Undergraduate History Conference held in St. Andrews on the 6^th of February 2016. This conference is the sole history conference in Britain completely organized by and for Undergraduate Students. The purpose of the Undergraduate History Conference is to facilitate a forum for Undergraduates interested in academic careers to research and present their work in a conference setting and have it published in a journal.

In selecting a theme for this year’s conference we wanted a theme that would excite conference attendees and allow for a great variety of submissions. While debating the merits of different topics we began to think about war. It has been a constant and powerful force in recorded human history and has affected almost every culture in existence, including ours today. Therefore, we believed it was an important topic to explore in the Undergraduate History Conference.

In our search for papers, we sought a diversity of locations and interpretations. We believed that in order to fully facilitate a discussion on war in history, the topics needed to be both broad and global. The time periods explored ranged from the Middle Ages, with a study concerning the Norman invasion of Italy and its effect on identity, to the 1980s, with an examination of Punk culture in East Germany as a form of war on accepted culture. The papers also examined different types of weapons used in war, from castles in the 11th century to atomic bombs in communist China in the 1970s. From the great range of topics, we delved into a deep and heated debate on the nature of war at the end of the conference in a round table discussion.

In addition, it was tremendously important to choose a Keynote Speaker that would match the sentiment of the conference. For this, Dr. Riccardo Bavaj was the clear choice. His presentation was based upon his newly released book Nazism: A New Introduction, which fit our search for novel interpretations of war. He spoke on the Volksgemeinschaft in Germany during the Second World War, particularly the relationship between Volksgemeinschaft and violence. His presentation served as an excellent example of how to conduct, create, and present research at the professional level.

Overall, the day was one of a great exchange of knowledge among all conference attendees. I would like to thank the participants of the Conference for devoting a great deal of their time to pursue history beyond the classroom. As well, the generosity of the History and Classics Departments of St. Andrews for their funding contributions, and the Dean of Arts at the University of St. Andrews, Professor Hibbert, for sponsoring the Dean’s Prize for the Conference.