At our conference ‘Historians without Borders: The Use and Abuse of History in Conflicts’ the International Network of Historians without Borders was established and a Coordinating Committee was appointed to lead its work. The members of the first Coordinating Committee of HWB are Prof. Jan C. Behrends (Germany), Carl Bildt (Sweden), Dr. Vasu Gounden (South Africa), Prof. Margaret MacMillan (Canada), Dr. Erkki Tuomioja (Finland), Prof. Christina Twomey (Australia) and Dr. Sergey Zhuravlev (Russia).
Last week, on September 16th, the Coordinating Committee gathered together for the first time in Berlin. The meeting was organised with the invaluable help of the Finnish Embassy in Berlin. Before the meeting, in the morning, we also had the opportunity to speak with German historians and hear their thoughts on the initiative and ideas for furthering our work. After the discussion with local historians the members enjoyed lunch with Ambassador Ritva Koukku-Ronde before beginning the first official meeting of the Coordinating Committee.
The Committee discussed the Network’s plans for the upcoming year and started developing a more far reaching plan for activities for the three year period of 2017 to 2019. The next meeting of the whole HWB Network is planned to take place in the spring of 2018.
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