Detention of asylum-seekers, the Holocaust, German Army war crimes, Nazism and Stalinist genocide are some of the topics to be presented by six top historians and social scientists at a major international conference at The University of Western Australia from 11 - 14 July.

Two UWA-authored scholarly books will be launched at the conference.  They are UWA Winthrop Professor Richard Bosworth's Whispering City: Rome and its Histories (Yale University Press 2011) and UWA Associate Professor Mark Edele's Stalinist Society 1928-1953 (Oxford University Press 2011).  

Whispering City weaves Rome's quintessential figures - Garibaldi, Pius XII, Mussolini and Berlusconi - and architectural icons with the forgotten and unknown to reveal the Eternal City's many historical meanings.  

Stalinist Society gives a fresh analytical overview using declassified archives, interviews, memoirs and personal diaries.

They will be launched by UWA Arts/Law graduate Dr Frances Flanagan of Birkbeck College, University of London.  Dr Flanagan's research interests are in the history and cultures of activist organisations (including Irish nationalist, human rights, humanitarian, environmental and Indigenous organisations), the memory of war and political violence in the twentieth century, the history of emotions, transitional justice and the uses of the law as a response to historic wrongs.

The renowned historians are: 

• Omer Bartov, the John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History and Professor of German Studies at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, US;
• Mary Bosworth, a UWA graduate, is a Fellow of St Cross College and Reader in Criminology at the Law Faculty of the University of Oxford.  She has recently edited a major collection on her discipline entitled What is Criminology? (Oxford University Press 2011);
• John Dickie, Professor of Italian Studies at University College, London, He is in Australia to promote his new book, Blood Brotherhoods, a history of Italian organised crime;
• Jürgen Förster, author of three books on the history of the Wehrmacht (the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany), the Nazi police and the SS, Hitler's guard.  He is based at the Potsdam Military History Research Institute;  
• Robert Gerwarth, Professor of History and Director of the Centre for War Studies at University College, Dublin.  He is the author of books on Bismarck and high-ranking Nazi official Heydrich; and
• David Marples, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of History and Classics and Director of the Stasiuk Program for the Study of Contemporary Ukraine at the University of Alberta, Canada.  His most recent book is Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine.

UWA's School of Humanities in collaboration with UWA's Institute of Advanced Studies and the Faculty of Arts at Murdoch University will host the Australian Association for European History's 22^nd conference, War and peace, barbarism and civilisation in modern Europe and its empires, from 11 - 14 July.

Media references

Winthrop Professor Richard Bosworth  (+61 8)  6488 2131  /  (+61 8)  9450 6870
(UWA School of Humanities)
Janine MacDonald (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 5563  /  (+61 4) 32 637 716