Transnational War Volunteering: From Garibaldi To The Cold War

School of History – Leeds Humanities Research Institute, University of Leeds

10 – 11 July 2018

10th July: School of History, Michael Sadler Building, Room 3.11

13:00 – 14:15 Panel I: Transnational volunteering: longue durée approaches Chair and opening of the conference: Nir Arielli (University of Leeds)

Enrico Acciai (University of Leeds, UK) – Transnational war volunteering and political radicalism in Southern Europe: a new approach to Garibaldinism

Samuël Kruizinga (University of Amsterdam. Netherlands) – Foreign fighting and the Law. Evolving Dutch Laws on Citizenship, 1815-2015

14:15 – 14:30 Coffee break

14:30 – 16:00 Panel II: First World War Chair: Jessica Meyer (University of Leeds)

Andrea Spicciarelli (University of Bologna, Italy) – Garibaldinism at the outbreak of the Great War (1914-15). A case study

Lidia Pupilli (University of Macerata, Italy) – “Waging war on war”. The voluntarism of Giuseppe Chiostergi from the Balkans to the Argonne (1911-1915)

David Stefancic (Saint Mary’s College – Notre Dame, USA) – Jozef Pilsudski’s Polish Legions: A Polish Army without a Polish State 1914-1918

16:00 – 16:15 Coffee break

16: 15 – 19:00 Public keynote speech and screening
Hearing Voices (a short fiction film by Marylou & Jerome Bongiorno, 2018)

Filmmakers’ Q&A via Skype
Nir Arielli (Univeristy of Leeds, UK) – How foreign war volunteers imagine their predecessors

19:00 – 19:30 Wine Reception

11th July: Leeds Humanities Research Institute, Seminar Room 1 and 2

9:30 – 11:00 Panel III: The Spanish Civil War and Beyond Chair: Peter Anderson (University of Leeds)

Fraser Raeburn (University of Edinburgh, UK) – An “army of strangers”? Network, locality and decisions among the International Brigade Volunteers

Tyler Wentzell (Canadian Forces College, Canada) – “A Vast and Cunning Conspiracy”: Recruiting, Dispatching and Supporting Canadians in the Spanish Civil War

Margit Franz (University of Graz, Austria) – “No Munich in the Pacific!”: The “Spanish doctors” in China Kristo Karvinen (University of Leeds, UK) – The Finnish Foreign Ministry and the Treatment of Foreign

Volunteers in the Winter War

11:00 – 11:15 Coffee break

11:15 – 12:45 Panel IV: Transnational War Volunteering in the Middle East and Africa Chair: Elisabeth Leake (University of Leeds)

James Olusegun Adeyeri (Lagos State University, Nigeria) – Foreign Volunteers in the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War: Political Radicalism and Impact

Volker Prott (Aston University, UK) – Freedom Fighters, Liability, or Useful Idiots? British, Belgian, and German Mercenaries in the Congo, 1960–65

Ines El Alami (Sciences Po, France) – Moroccan volunteers for Palestine, 1948-1982

12:45 – 14:00 Lunch break

14:00 – 15:30 Panel V: War volunteering from the late Cold War to our days Chair: Morten Heiberg (University of Copenhagen)

Gerardo Sanchez Nateras (Colegio de México, Mexico) – International volunteering and the Revolution of Nicaragua

Ahmet Yusuf Ozdemir (Yildiz Technical University, Turkey) – “Afghan Turks”; Volunteers from Turkey in the Soviet-Afghan War

15:30 – 16:00 Final Remarks

Enrico Acciai (University of Leeds)
Nir Arielli (University of Leeds)
Morten Heiberg (University of Copenhagen)