This blog is run by a group of historians who share an interest in both global and urban history. Taking into consideration recent charges that global history is in danger of an imperial overstretch, we aim at grounding our interest in historical connectedness in analyses of concrete local processes. This combination, we hope, illuminates the inherently uneven outgrowths of urbanized globalization. While treating cities as nerve centers of long-distance connections and engines of momentous historical developments, we therefore also explore how they produced segmented, unequal, and unmixed cityscapes. Our blog works closely with the Global Urban History Project, whose aims we share and which we encourage our readers to join.
The blog itself has published posts on a range of different cities and topics since its launch in November 2015. It grew out of the observation that an increasing number of historians are bringing together global and urban history in innovative ways, possibly creating a new field of historical research. The blog aims at facilitating exchanges between these scholars, since we feel that historians working on cities in different world regions, who also share an interest in global history, need to connect better. It also seeks to foster a critical conversation about the theoretical and methodological implications of bringing together global and urban history. Since global urban history is a research field in formation, this is an ideal moment to take stock and reflect on the direction in which scholars are heading.
By inviting guest submissions for our blog and by disseminating information on upcoming events and book reviews on our website as well as on Twitter and Facebook, we hope to become an even wider forum of exchange for those invested in global and urban history.
Global Urban History 