Call for Papers | Junior Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS
Deadline: July 3

Patterns of Global Economic Integration and Disintegration: 1850s to the Present

Colloque Junior, Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po (CHSP) – University of Chicago (UChicago) Centre in Paris, 

November 19-20, 2026 

We gladly announce a call for papers for a conference on the historical foundations of economic integration and disintegration from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.
We invite submissions that explore the concrete forces shaping, propelling, constraining, or reversing economic interconnectedness across the world. Despite the development of a voluminous literature on topics such as trade expansion, capital mobility, and cross-border production in the social sciences, historical perspectives over the past forty years have rarely made the global economy the subject of dedicated analysis.
The straightjackets undergirding common narratives – “free market” against “state intervention”, “free trade” against “mercantilism,” or “financial liberalization” against “regulation” – betray the need to explore the diversity of forms global economic integration or disintegration may assume. We believe that detailed archival research and a distinct historical framework can elucidate the heterogeneity of linkages in the global economy over time.
We seek contributions that more precisely map the forces compelling economic integration, examine why such connections have repeatedly frayed or been disrupted, and move beyond common binary or linear narratives on the topic.

Potential axes may include, but are not limited to:
- Global Economic Governance
- Trade, Finance, Money, and Debt
- Commodities and the Environment
- Ideas, Politics, and Contestation
- Social Aspects of the Global Economy