2025-26 seminars
Wednesday 8 October 2025, 4.30pm-6pm
In the Humanities Hub, 1 University Gardens
Welcome Event
All are welcome, and we particularly encourage you to invite your PGT and PGR students so that we have a chance to connect with everyone working on an aspect of the United States at the University.
Wednesday 22 October 2025, 4.30pm-6pm
in Room 331, Wolfson Medical School
Dr. Rowena Azada-Palacios (Edinburgh): "US Empire and the American Research University"
Paper abstract: US Empire and the American Research University
The emergence and eventual ascendancy of the American research university has been studied primarily through national and international lens, often overlooking its connection to US imperialism. This paper addresses this gap by asking how the acquisition of overseas colonies at the end of the 19th century influenced the development of the university in the US. It focuses on two university leaders, David Prescott Barrows and Elmer Drew Merrill, who both served the Philippine Insular Government early in their careers before assuming leadership roles at the University of California during the interwar period. By analysing their work in both locations, this paper shows how they each came to consider different ways that the university could contribute to sustaining US’ global power even after its formal empire shrank. For Barrows, this was through a globalised understanding of the educational function of the state university. For Merrill, this was through the cultivation of inter-imperial networks of knowledge production.
Biography
Rowena Azada-Palacios is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Edinburgh's School of Law and an assistant professor of philosophy at Ateneo de Manila University. Her work lies at the intersection of critical political thought and education. She is the author of Postcolonial Education and National Identity (Bloomsbury, 2021) and is the founding chair of the Philippine Society of Education and Philosophy (PhilSEP).