After Life: The Legacy of Discontinued International Organizations in the 20th Century

This year's lecture will be delivered by Kiran Klaus Patel and will explore what happens to international organizations once they cease to exist. The lecture will show that we know very little about the organizations' legacies and the subsequent roles and impacts of the people, ideas, practices, and objects that once brought them life and meaning. Nevertheless, new beginnings often resonate with the work of earlier organizations, and in times of crisis, experts and practitioners frequently reference the experiences of previous forums in their search for solutions. The talk explores the many afterlives of discontinued international organizations. It will discuss international crises, hidden legacies and continuities, cautionary tales as well as unexpected sources of hope. The lecture will be followed by a comment delivered by Natasha Wheatley of Princeton University.

Kiran Klaus Patel holds a chair for modern history at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich where he also serves as the director of Project House Europe. His teaching and reseach focus on problems of modern European and US American history. Comparative, transnational, and global approaches feature prominently in his work. His most recent book in English is: Project Europe: A History (Cambridge, 2020).

The lecture will start at 6pm with doors opening at 5:30pm.