Global networks
Birmingham’s history department is a leader in global and international history, with world-class research on humanitarianism, international law, transnational activism, global exploration, and environmental and resource history.
Our research uses innovative methods to study complex networks, showing how ideas spread across continents, how environmental changes affect society, how trade patterns shift, and how economic concepts and practices spread globally.
Research projects include medieval economic history, the emergence of cooperatives, resource extraction by empires, and global sites of memory. Historians also study national histories, like regional identities in Brazil or cycling history in the American South, within the context of global networks.
By answering key questions in global and international history, Birmingham historians help us understand how knowledge and practices spread, how local histories differ, how these differences create sub-global identities, and how this shapes today’s world.
Researchers
Staff especially engaged with this research theme
Dr Nathan Cardon; historian of the social, cultural, and transnational histories of the U.S. South, mobility, U.S. empire, and race.
Dr Courtney J. Campbell; researches Brazilian cultural and social history, race and representation, gender and representation, transnational consumer culture, popular culture movements, movement and migration.
Dr Jonathan E Gumz; Modern Central and Eastern Europe, modern international history, global insurgency and counterinsurgency.
Dr Simon Jackson; researches the colonial, international and global history of the modern Middle East and the Mediterranean in the twentieth century.
Dr Mo Moulton; works on the political and social history of 20th century Britain, Ireland, and empire.
Professor Corey Ross; works on global environmental history and modern European social and cultural history.
Dr Shirley Ye; works on modern China, environmental history, cities, science and technology, frontier and transnational history, gender.