Past Conferences

The International Institute of Social History organized the Thirteenth European Social Science History conference online, 24-27 March 2021.

The International Institute of Social History organized the Twelfth European Social Science History conference in Belfast, 4-7 April 2018 at Queen's University.

The IISH organized the 11th European Social Science History Conference, Valencia, Spain, 30 March - 2 April 2016.

The seventh European Social Science History Conference took place in Lisbon from 26 February until 1 March 2008. This year, the ESSHC drew some 1600 participants who discussed all aspects of social history in more 400 sessions, and with these numbers was larger than ever before.

The ESSHC is organised every even year by the IISH, alternatingly in the Low Countries or elsewhere in Europe. At the IISH Els Hiemstra is responsible for the ESSHC. In Lisbon our host was professor in Medieval History Ana Maria Seabra de Almeida Rodrigues. From globalization to milk, from soccer tot economic growth, from political violence to gypsies, countless historical topics filled the programme, studied with the methods and insights of the social sciences.

American historian Barbara Weinstein pronounced the keynote lecture on Orientalism in One Country? Race, Region, and Nation in Twentieth-Century Brazil. Before and after that event the participants divided themselves over 25 parallel sessions which proceeded from half past eight in the morning until half past six in the evening. The programme and some images of the ESSHC are available from our web site.

The sixth European Social Science History Conference brought some 1300 social historians together in Amsterdam, 22-25 March. Together they offered a programme which filled more than 330 two-hour sessions and a vast overview of research done by social scientist and historians that apply social theories to the past. With these numbers, the conference was the same size as the fifth conference, in Berlin in 2004.

Every two hours the participants divided and re-divided over more than 20 sessions. They flocked together to hear a keynote speech on History as critique delivered by Joan W. Scott. At this general meeting ESSHC organiser Els Hiemstra unfolded plans to take the successful conference to Lisbon in 2008.

From 24-27 March the IISH organized the fifth European Social Science History Conference. The ESSHC took place at the Humboldt University (Berlin, Germany), which constituted the first move out of the Netherlands for the Conference.

The move can only be regarded as very successful, as the number of participants rose to 1350. The number of sessions rose to 340.

The number of session co-organised by more than one network has over the years risen to about 10 % and remained at that level. Papers and presentations remained on a very high level. For a conference of this type the number of papers withdrawn at a late stage was remarkably small.

Papers presented became more evenly distributed over the different networks. In 2000 the four largest networks were responsible for about half the papers presented. By 2004 this figure had fallen to below a third.

Predictably, the move to Berlin meant that the relative number of participants from Germany rose. We had hoped that it would also make participation easier for Eastern Europeans. Thanks to funding by the Deutsche Akademischer Austausch Dienst, we were able to subsidize more participants from non-OECD countries. However, apart from the growth of the percentage of participants from Germany and a relative decline of the number of participants from the Netherlands, the breakdown of participation from different parts of the globe remained remarkably constant.