The role of civil societies as well as nongovernmental organizations in stabilizing democratically constituted polities has strengthened the interest in social movements as a constituent element of civil societies. In different parts of the world, social movements continue to have a strong influence on contemporary politics.

Historians are not only beginning to historize these relatively recent political developments; they are also trying to relate them to a longer history of social movements, including traditional labour organisations, such as working-class parties and trade unions. In the longue durée, it is important to recognise that social movements are by no means a recent phenomenon and are not even an exclusively modern phenomenon.

The aim of the conference is to investigate social movements in their plurality and variety in concrete historical settings, and in their transnational entanglements. The concept 'social movement' acts as a heuristic device that allows historians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to investigate social and political activism in novel settings in order to highlight different notions of political and social protest on both the political left and right.

THURSDAY, 6 SEPTEMBER

14:00 Stefan Berger (Ruhr University Bochum) /
Holger Nehring (University of Sheffield),
Introductory remarks and conceptual thoughts on the historical study of Social Movements

14:30 Dieter Rucht (Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin),
Social Movements – some conceptual challenges from a sociological perspective

15:15 Felicia Kornbluh (University of Vermont),
The History of Social Movements in North America

16:00 Coffee / Tea

16:30 Sean Scalmer (University of Melbourne),
The History of Social Movements in Australia 17:15 Rochona Majumdar (University of Chicago), The History of Social Movements in India

18:00 Andreas Eckert (Humboldt University Berlin),
The History of Social Movements in Africa

19:30 Dinner

FRIDAY, 7 SEPTEMBER

9:30 Marcel van der Linden (International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam),
The History of Social Movements in Europe

10:15 Susan Eckstein (Boston University),
The History of Social Movements in Latin America

11:00 Coffee / Tea

11:30 Kevin Passmore (Cardiff University),
Fascism

12:15 Fabian Virchow (Düsseldorf Polytechnic),
Post-Fascist Right-Wing Social Movements

13:00 Lunch

14:30 Stefan Berger (Ruhr-University Bochum),
The Labour Movement

15:15 Holger Nehring (University of Sheffield),
The Peace Movement

16:00 Frank Uekötter (University of Munich),
The Ecological Movement

16:45 Coffee / Tea

17.15 Seonjoo Park (Hanyang University, Seoul),
The Feminist Movement in Asia, North America and Europe

18:00 Pascal Eitler (MPIB, Berlin),
Religious Social Movements

18:45 Bernd Weisbrod (Göttingen),
Moral Movements

20:00 Dinner

SATURDAY, 8 SEPTEMBER

9.30 Gerd Rainer Horn (Sciences Po Paris),
1968 and Social Movements

10:15 Petra Terhoeven (University of Göttingen),
Terrorism as a Transnational Social Movement

11:00 Coffee / Tea

11:30 Susan Eckstein (Boston University),
The History of Social Movements in Latin America

12:15 Jürgen Kocka (Humboldt University Berlin),
Concluding remarks

13:00 Light Lunch

Alle Informationen im Programm (siehe PDF).