Student internships spring 2023

About The Lausanne Project: Peace in the Middle East?

Formed in 2017, The Lausanne Project (TLP) is a forum for research and knowledge exchange related to the legacy of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. Less well known than the Treaty of Versailles, Lausanne has the distinction of being the only one of the post-WWI treaties to remain in force today and is widely viewed as the "birth certificate" of modern Turkey. With important elections scheduled for 2023, the centenary, Lausanne will take centre stage in debates around sovereignty, identity, energy, faith and migration in the region. Lausanne's importance to today's politics is witnessed by the considerable energy invested in disinformation about the treaty's supposed "secret clauses".

Lausanne radically reshaped the Near East and the Middle East after a decade of war. As well as moving borders it also forced 1.5m people to leave their homes in a so-called "population exchange" intended to reduce "minorities" within Greece and Turkey. The Lausanne Conference (1922-3) was important in other ways: it marked the arrival of the Americans and the Soviet Union as would-be "peacemakers" in the region, saw the failure of the post-genocide project of an "Armenian National Home" as well as back-room discussions over Middle East oil. TLP Internships will be of interest to students interested in Greece, Turkey and international relations in the region, as well as questions of international diplomacy, migration and humanitarianism, development, contested pasts and public history.

Put simply TLP brings the expertise of its network of scholars to a range of audiences through a series of pathways: Twitter, an exhibition in the Musée Historique de Lausanne, the website (run on WordPress, and shortly to be translated into Turkish), resources for teachers, a graphic novel and an edited volume. 2023 is crunch time for TLP, and as an intern, you will work in collaboration with the convenors on one of these projects - to be determined on the basis of your skills (including languages) and interests. We welcome ideas for new pathways and projects, too.

The internship will likely include some element of historical research into an aspect of Lausanne and its place in the media/historical/diplomatic conversation today. All work can be done remotely but there may be opportunities for you to assist at TLP events. As with previous interns, you would be expected to write a blog post about your work suitable for publication on the website. Please feel free to direct informal enquiries to Professor Jonathan Conlin (Southampton) or Dr Ozan Ozavci (Utrecht) at j.conlin@soton.ac.uk or h.o.ozavci@uu.nl

Applicants should be master's students in history, looking for an extended academic internship (30 ECTS - HHIK13011E, Fagstudieordning, Kandidattilvalg i historie, p. 9)

If you are interested, please send a 1-page motivation and a CV to Haakon A. Ikonomou. Deadline: 15 December 2022. The decision will be made in early January 2023. Internships last from February to May 2023.

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