Global History and Governance
Academic Year 2018-2019
The PhD in Global History and Governance is an advanced research degree at the end of which each student must defend a dissertation based on independent and original academic research.
The course offers a multi-disciplinary training program based on history and law and open to contributions from other disciplines, such as economics, political science and political philosophy. The program focuses on the comparison, connections and processes of globalization that have characterized different areas of the planet since the first epoch of global imperialism and does so by focusing on the relational dimension of historical processes, legal regimes and the organization of power, on the interdependencies between economic, political, juridical, cultural and social factors and on the circulation, exchange and interconnection of ideas, people, institutions, legal cultures, political models, concepts, rights and goods on a global scale.
Members of the PhD board can offer training and preparation for research at the level of the best international centers in the following areas:
- History and historiography
- European empires of the modern and contemporary age
- States, wars and violence in the nineteenth and twentieth century
- History of slavery and forced labor
- The legal heritage of Europe and its integration
- Religions and the sacred in the modern and contemporary world
- Ideas, conceptions and practices of citizenship
- States, nations, languages, peoples, classes
- The globalization of law
Candidates for the PhD are normally expected to hold a master’s degree (or an equivalent qualification) in a subject relevant to the intended topic of study.
The PhD course in Global History and Governance is designed for highly prepared and motivated students who also manage different languages and willing to study in multi and interdisciplinary environment.
Classes are taught either in Italian or English.
TEACHING ACTIVITY
The PhD program develops over 4 years. The teaching activity concentrates mainly in the first and second years of the course and will take place both in Pisa and Naples. Each student must attend 9 courses (3 in each of the first three semesters) with final verification and actively participate in seminars and workshops on specific aspects of the doctoral work and lectures held by invited scholars.The teaching activity, which will always have an advanced character and will be based on a comparative approach, will revolve around the following topics:
- History and historiography of the global society
- Mythologies of global law
- Forms of organization of power
- Rise, expansion and decline of empires
- History of concepts: people, state, nation and nationality, national language, class
- Revolutions, counter-revolutions, civil wars and global wars
- Rights and forms of citizenship
- Power, religion, sacred in the modern and contemporary eras
- Forms of economic and legal integration on a regional and global basis
- Global history of work and dynamics of the economy
In the third and fourth years the students will focus on their research and will be required to give periodic account of their progresses.
Students will be required to spend at least a year abroad in one of the major international research centres, and in archives and libraries relevant for their research topics.
Each year the Ph.D. board runs presentation days for students.