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History of the Commission
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History of the
Commission
The Commission on
Historiography was established at the 15th International Congress of Historical
Sciences, held in Bucharest
in 1980. The groundwork was prepared by Charles-Olivier Carbonell (France),
Lucian Boia (Romania) and Georg G. Iggers (USA), all are
well-known scholars in the study of historiography and historical
theory. The first Bureau for the Commission consisted of Bianca Valota Cavalotti
(Italy), Andrzej Grabski
(Poland), Hans Schleier (GDR), Karl-Georg
Faber (FRG), as well as the above three scholars. Wolfgang Mommsen
(FRG), Jerzy Topolski
(Poland), and Zhang
Zhilian (China)
also worked closely with the Bureau for establishing the Commission and
helping organize its activities in the formative period.
The
Commission's first president (1980-1990) was Charles-Olivier Carbonell. In 1982, the Commission launched the
journal Storia della Storiografia, edited originally by Valota Cavalotti in
Milan and later by the history
faculty of the University
of Turin, where Edoardo Tortarolo
has acted as its chief editor since 1990. From the mid 1990s, Georg Iggers also assumed the editorship of the
journal. Publishing articles in English, French, German, as well as in
Italian, Storia della Storiografia
has become a leading journal in the field of the history of
historiography.
In 1990 Wolfgang
Mommsen succeeded Carbonell as president
(1990-1995) of the Commission and the Storia della Storiografia also became a
free-standing journal whereby its editors were given greater autonomy.
Meanwhile the theoretical debates of the 1980s had called for more
attention to theoretical issues in the study of historiography. In 1995
the Commission thus changed its name from International Commission on
Historiography to International Commission for the History and Theory
of Historiography at its meeting in Montreal. At the same meeting, Georg Iggers succeeded Mommsen as president
(1995-2000) of the Commission. In 2000 when the Commission had its
general meeting in Oslo,
Richard T. Vann, senior editor of History and Theory,
was elected president (2000-2005), along with a re-shaped Bureau. In
2005, at the 20th International Congress of
Historical Sciences in Sydney, Masayuki
Sato of Yamanashi University in Kofu, Japan
became the fourth president (2005-2010) of the Commission. In 2010 at
the 21st Congress in Amsterdam, Antonis Liakos of University of Athens,
Greece, was elected the fifth president, along with a new, expanded
bureau (2010-2015).
During its first
twenty-five years of existence, the Commission has devoted its great
efforts to drawing interest in all aspects of historiography and
expanding its membership worldwide. At present, the Commission
comprises members not only from Euro-America, but also from East Asia
and Australia.
It provides an important venue for scholars of diverse cultural
backgrounds to exchange their work and ideas in advancing the study of
historiography and historical theory. In the future, the Commission
hopes to promote more of its work and have more participation from
scholars in Africa and the Middle East.
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