Professor David Armitage: Horizons of History: Space, Time and the Future of the Past

Big is back across a wide range of historical fields. More historians are stretching space, to create international, transnational and global histories. Others are expanding time, to pursue Big History, Deep History and the history of the Anthropocene. What explains this broadening of horizons? And what does it mean for the future of history? This lecture will make a case for history as a discipline of social and political transformation amid crises of global governance, rising inequality and anthropogenic climate change.