Harvard International & Global History Seminar (HIGHS)

Co-chairs: Erez Manela and Jamie Martin

The Harvard International & Global History Seminar (HIGHS) is a forum for cutting-edge work in the fields of international and global history.

The seminar, organized at the Department of History and generously supported by the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, has met several times each term on Wednesday afternoons since 2003.

The HIGHS schedule for 2026-27 is below. Past years are archived here.

Unless otherwise noted, sessions are held on Wednesdays 3:45-5:45 pm at the History Department Conference Room (Robinson 125)

Fall 2026

September 30
Panel: Revolution as a Comparative Method
Ibrahim Elhoudaiby (Brandeis University)
Idriss P. Fofana (Harvard Law School)
Sylvia Sellers-García (Boston College)

Comment:
Nathan Perl-Rosenthal (CNRS / Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies)
Naghmeh Sohrabi (Brandeis University)

Co-sponsored by the Marc Bloch Seminars in Comparative History

October 21 (Canceled!)
(Please note, the October 21st HIGHS seminar has been canceled.)

November 18 (previously scheduled for November 11)
Bulelani Jili (Georgetown): “Remaking the Economy: Performing Digital Sovereignty in Postcolonial Kenya”
Comment: Emmanuel Akyeampong (Harvard)

December 2
Aimee Genell (Boston University): “From Law to Force: Ending the Ottoman Capitulations, 1914-1923”
Comment: Jamie Martin (Harvard)

Spring 2027

February 17
Chris Capozzola (MIT): "The Nye Committee and the Business of War, 1934-1936"
Comment: Jesse Robertson (Harvard)

March 10
Evan Fernandez (Middlebury): “The Promise of the Pacific: Chile, Japan, and Building Nations and Orders with Nitrate, 1890s-1940s”
Comment: Rachelle Rodriguez (Harvard)

March 31
Sara Silverstein (UConn): “Displacement, Disease, and Disability: The History of Immigration and Health in Making the Modern World”
Comment: Victoria Gonzalez Maltes (US Holocaust Memorial Museum)

April 14
Hagar Gal (Harvard): “The Long Arm of Malwa Opium: transformations of economic lives in British and Qing conquest frontiers, 1810-1880”
Comment: Michael Szonyi (Harvard)