Manuel Lucena-Giraldo (Madrid, 1961) is Senior Research Fellow in the Spanish Council for Scientific Research and Professor of Humanities in IE Business School/IE University. He was Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, Lecturer BOSP in Stanford University and Visiting Professor at Tufts University, Javeriana University (Bogota, Colombia), IVIC (Venezuela), Colegio de Mexico, University of the Andes (Chile and Colombia) and St. Antony's College (Oxford). His publications include a number of books on travels, scientific expeditions, cities, images of nations, empires or globalization. More recently, he was the editor of "Polyphonic History." His last books are "Francisco de Miranda. La aventura de la politica" and "The Age of Explorations." He is a member of the Advisory Committee of "National Geographic" in Global History and Education Attache of the Spanish Embassy in Colombia.
"Imperfect Visions of Imperial Pasts: Reflections on European Empires"
Failures of soi-disant European projects and institutions often arise from Europeans' inability to assemble a common historical vision. Although from outside and sometimes, among scholars, from within, European histories tend to be represented as "European History," there is no such thing as a single European version of how empires and nations come into being, or ought to be. I will consider national historiographies in the matter, from the last 20 years, and offer some new suggestions.
Sponsored by the Department of History.