Retrospection of the Dieter Conrad Memorial Lecture 2013
The historian Prof. Dr. David Ludden delivered this year’s Dieter Conrad
Memorial Lecture with a talk on ‘Asian Histories of Globalization:
Long Distance Mobility and Territorial Power in the Longue Durée’ on
June 27th at the South Asia Institute. The Dieter Conrad Memorial Lecture
is held annually in honour of
the tremendous contribution that
Conrad has made, while working at
the South Asia Institute.
After having served on the faculty
of History at the University of Pennsylvania
from 1981 until 2007, Prof.
Ludden currently holds a professorship
of Political Economy and
Globalization and is Chair of the
Department of History at New York
University. Prof. Ludden looks back on 45 years of outstanding research
in South Asia with a focus on southern India and, more recently,
Bangladesh and northeast India. His numerous publications cover a
broad range of topics such as ancient Tamil poetry, agrarian history, the
intellectual history of subalternity,
changing development regimes
and the history of global capitalism.
In his Conrad Lecture, Prof. Ludden
proposed to understand the
history of globalization in Asia
from the vantage point of long distance
mobility. The far-reaching
movements of people, goods and
ideas have shaped local realities in Asia over the long term and up to
the present, especially as they pertain to coastal regions, inland frontiers
and expansive cultural spaces of territorial power. The talk drew
on material of a forthcoming book that is now called “History Inside
Globalization: Spatial Power and Inequity in Asia”.
The lecture began with a welcome address by the director of the South
Asia Institute Prof. Hans Harder, followed by an introductory note by
Prof. Gita Dharampal-Frick on Prof. Ludden’s influential body of work
and academic achievements. After the event Prof. Ludden expressed
his wish to facilitate future cooperation and exchange between his department
and the South Asia Institute.
