Au Coeur de la Grande Guerre: L’individu au croisement du civil et du militaire (At the Heart of the Great War: the Individual at the Intersection of the Civilian and Military Dimensions of the Conflict)
Mons Memorial Museum, Mons, Belgium, 26-28 October 2017

The symposium « In the Heart of the Great War » has been, above all, conceived as an exchange between graduate students and early career researchers in order to construct, via debate and dialogue, coherent interpretations about the individual at the crossroads between military and civilian realities. The desire to organise this conference originates from previous encounters and from the desire to prolong the discussions had during the Summer School « The Face of the First World War », organised by the International Research Centre of the Historial de la Grande Guerre of Péronne.

The symposium theme is merely a guideline, a clue for reflection rather than a well-defined subject. It leads us to question the ways through which individuals – soldiers, civilians at the home front or in occupied territories – integrate and conciliate the military dimension on one side (whether it’s their experience at the front or German presence on the streets of their village) and the civil dimension on the other. In addition to the encounter between the civilian and military « worlds », constituting two separate spheres, we must reflect upon the individual as being at the crossroads between two dimensions, which jointly construct him or her.

Conference website here.
Programme: Programme Mons