Thursday 6 March 2025, 5pm
In the Boyd Orr Building, Lecture Theatre Room 513
Professor Guillaume Piketty, Sciences Po
“Societies After Hostilities: Coming Out of War”
Diplomatic negotiations and political upheavals, joyous yet often bittersweet homecomings, the restoration of private and family life, gratitude and cultural demobilization, mourning, trauma and healing, traces of war and memories... the mere mention of these themes highlights the richness and topicality of what is now commonly referred to as “coming out of war” processes. This lecture will consider the ways and means by which individuals who—for different reasons and with varying status—have experienced a conflict gradually emerge from it, with more or less success. It will focus in particular on the sensitive, emotional and intimate dimension, as well as on the long-term prospects of this “coming out of war”. It will examine the possible sources available to historians for investigating such complex topics, the pitfalls that lie in wait for these historians, and how this work can affect them personally. The Second World War provides a wealth of examples, owing to its enormous scale, its great diversity of postwar experiences, and the extreme violence it saw. But other conflicts will be examined from a comparative perspective, and in possible relation to current events.
Guillaume Piketty is Professor of History at Sciences Po, in Paris. His research focuses on the social and cultural history of World War II in France and in Europe, and, more broadly, on war, resistance, coming out of war, and society from the US Civil War onwards. Notably, his work includes working on these subjects from the perspectives of the history of senses and sensitivities as well as the history of emotions and intimacy.
