A new interdisciplinary online Occupation Studies Research Network which aims to promote the exchange of ideas and encourage a more systematic, comprehensive and conceptual understanding of the subject, was launched on 1 September 2021. The Network now has over fifty members. Doctoral students, postdoc and early career academics and staff at universities, other higher education institutes, museums and archives, who are either actively researching or have recently completed work on some aspect of the subject at PhD level or above are welcome to join the Network and are invited to contribute to the blog.

Presentation

A new interdisciplinary online Occupation Studies Research Network which aims to promote the exchange of ideas and encourage a more systematic, comprehensive and conceptual understanding of the subject, was launched on 1 September 2021.

The Network website and blog, hosted at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, is intended to act as a hub for the global community of scholars who are working on military occupation as a form of rule and as a dynamic power relationship between occupiers and occupied.

The Network is not limited to any particular national cases of occupation and will focus on interactions between occupiers and occupied and the lived experience of occupation, within the overall time period from the French Revolution to the present day.

Blog posts should discuss the significance of a particular aspect of the subject or, more generally, reflect on how to study the phenomenon of occupation, discuss the value of comparisons between different cases of occupation, or provide a contribution to particular theoretical or historiographical debates. Posts should not be written primarily to present the results of detailed empirical research, which can be done by other means.

Contributions are invited from scholars who are exploring one or more of the following five themes:

• Government: the ruling techniques of the occupiers and the varied responses of the occupied.
• Rules: how the experience of occupation has affected international and national legal systems (and less formal rules and behavioural norms).
• Social interactions: between occupiers and occupied, including questions of race, gender and national (and other) identities.
• Legacies: the social, political, cultural and economic legacies of occupation.
• Memories: the diverse memories of occupation.

Network members with relevant expertise are invited to comment on the posts, so that the cumulative outcome over time of the work of the network will be to contribute to building a collective research agenda.

Membership is free of charge and members are invited to take part in all activities of the group. Contact details and academic profile will be listed in the ‘members’ page.

How to join the network ?

If you wish to join the network please send an email to the convenors including a brief summary of your current position and research interests.

• Further details are available on the Network website
• About the Network
• Network blog

The deadline for receiving applications for future network members is one year after launch: Thursday, September 1, 2022

Convenors

• Dr Camilo Erlichman, Assistant Professor at Maastricht University
• Dr Christopher Knowles. Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College, London.