The first Global History Collaborative seminar of this year was held on May 25, 2015, with Prof. Alessandro Stanziani of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) as guest speaker. Prof. Stanziani is the Director of Studies at the EHESS, which is a member of the GHC’s international network. In his presentation titled “Global history, connected history, comparative history. Scales and time,” Prof. Stanziani pointed out the avoidance of comparative history and an emphasis on connected history as unique trends of global history studies in France. He employed a history of historiography approach to convincingly tracing the origins of these characteristics back to Durkheim and Bloch in the first half of the 20th century. In addition, he identified pitfalls that are frequently seen in global history studies and proposed seven goals that should be pursued in future research. After the information-packed and extremely useful presentation, numerous comments and questions came from the audience regarding, for example, the research system in France and the relationship between historical studies and education, the ultimate goal of global history, the positionality of historians attempting to describe global history, and how regions should be understood/handled in global history. There was extremely fruitful discussion on a wide variety of topics.           

Prof. Stanziani is scheduled to visit Japan again this fall to participate in the GHC summer school. He will arrive well in advance of the summer school, and we hope to organize some kind of research meeting with Prof. Stanziani as a main guest. We hope to deepen understanding between French and Japanese researchers regarding the methodologies and significance of new world history/global history through continued dialogue and, building on this, move to the next step of engaging in collaborative studies on specific themes.