BGEAH & BrANCH Unite for a Postgraduate and Early Career Conference at the IHR in London
Friday 23 MARCH 2018
Call For Papers

In 2018, the British Group in Early American History Postgraduate and Early Career Conference enters its 4th year, and for the first time, joins forces with the British American Nineteenth Century Historians’ postgraduate community for a joint event. This will take place on Friday 23rd March 2018 at the London-based Institute of Historical Research, the UK’s national center for history. London, with its unique colonial archival resources and lively research student population, is one of the leading centers of American scholarship in Europe, and the IHR is a natural location for this event. The IHR Library’s North American Room houses one of the foremost UK collections of published material relating to the early history of the United States, Caribbean, and Canada. The day-long BGEAH & BrANCH Postgraduate and Early Career Conference will be a key forum for the discussion of individual research as well as themes and issues emerging in the field of American research in the UK. Continue reading
The annual British Group of Early Americanists Conference was held from September 3-6 at the University of Sheffield in Sheffield, England and drew a wide variety of scholars from the United Kingdom, the United States and France. In keeping with BGEAH traditions, there were many excellent papers, a key note address on Thursday night, a book club discussion on Friday and a conference dinner on Saturday, while newer traditions were started with some panels providing pre-circulated papers.
This weekend it wasn’t just the swiftly-approaching independence referendum causing excitement in Edinburgh—it was also the annual conference of the British Group of Early American Historians (BGEAH: that’s “beggar” to some, “big-ear” to others), which brought together early Americanists from Southampton to Dundee and all points in between, plus a few from the far side of the Atlantic. In the stately setting of Edinburgh University’s Old Medical School, the theme we were given was “Better Together? Union and Disunion in the Early Modern Atlantic.” I couldn’t possibly cover everything, but in this post I’ll share a few of my personal highlights.