Global history has established itself over the last ten years as a powerful and dynamic sector in historical research with wide appeal to an informed lay readership outside the academy. Now is the time to take stock. This is partly to ask what have been the most fruitful lines of inquiry and the most productive approaches. But it is also to speculate on which new directions global history is likely to follow and what we should see as the most urgent or important new lines of inquiry.

For its Founding Conference, Oxfords new Centre for Global History will engage with these questions across the whole chronological range from Ancient to Late Modern History. We have invited some of the foremost practitioners in the field to debate these issues. We expect that among the major themes to emerge will be how global history can connect with and serve different kinds of history, how it can benefit both from a dialogue across chronological periods and from cross-disciplinary research, and whether conceptual innovation should be a major priority.

Plenary speakers include Nicholas Purcell, Arjun Appadurai, Kenneth Pomeranz, Linda Colley, Chris Bayly, Ian Morris, Bob Moore, Kevin O'Rourke, John McNeill, Maxine Berg, Jurgen Osterhammel, Francis Robinson, Chris Wickham and James Belich.