National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, 8-10 November 2018
Call for papers deadline: 1 March 2018
Conference website
This conference will explore the First World War at sea through wide-ranging themes designed to provide a forum for interdisciplinary research and new perspectives on the subject. Focused on both navies and the merchant marine, the conference will also place the experience of the maritime war within the historical context of the years preceding and following the conflict.
Social history:
The human experience of maritime conflict
Explorations of the war at sea from perspectives of class, rank, race, age, gender or sexuality
Explorations of the war at sea from imperial and global perspectives
Operational history:
The ‘undramatic’ duties of naval warfare: blockade, minelaying, reconnaissance, trade protection, power projection
Naval wartime roles around the globe
The wartime duties of the merchant marine
Technology and the war at sea
Institutional history:
The wartime training of naval officers and ratings
The impact of war on naval hierarchies and ideas of leadership
Institutional lessons learned, and navies in the Second World War
The impact of the war on the merchant marine
Cultural history:
Public opinion and media coverage relating to the navy/merchant marine before, during and after the conflict
Cultural constructions of maritime heroism, and their relationship to pre-war touchstones, from Nelson to Scott
Memory and commemoration:
Remembering the war at sea: memorials, memoirs and material culture
Family history and the legacy of maritime war
Restoring the naval heroic: cinema, novels, pageants and museums
Themes, events and people that commemoration left unremembered
Please submit proposals of 300 words for individual papers, along with a short CV to Lizelle de Jager (Research Department Executive, National Maritime Museum): research@rmg.co.uk
We welcome submissions from academics, local historians and community group projects.
This conference is held in partnership with Gateways to the First World War, an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded centre for public engagement with the First World War Centenary.