The Military History Consortium (MHC) will be holding its third annual conference on 3-5 June 2026 at Sciences Po Aix in Aix-en-Provence, France. The keynote lecture will be given by Professor Guillaume Piketty (Sciences Po Paris).

The organising committee invites panel and individual paper proposals on any aspect of military history and the history of war and conflict in its broadest sense, ranging from ancient to modern times and spanning the entire globe. This includes the cross-chronological interactions between political, economic, social, and cultural history with military history. In line with the MHC’s aims, panels and papers that cover periodically and geographically under-represented areas (e.g. Antiquity, Medieval, and the Global South) are especially welcomed. A key aim of the MHC is also to provide a platform for and support the development of early career scholars, and therefore submissions from PhD students and postdocs are strongly encouraged.

Panel proposals should consist of:

• 3 papers and 1 chair/discussant
• 500 words rationale and presentation of the panel
• 300 words abstract for each paper
• 150 words short bio for each contributor

Individual paper proposals should consist of:

• 300 words abstract
• 150 words short bio

The submission deadline is 14 December 2025. The organising committee will inform potential participants on whether or not their paper/panel has been accepted by 26 January 2026.

The conference fee will be set at €105 and will cover coffee breaks, the welcoming reception, and lunches. The conference dinner will be bookable separately at a moderate fee.

Please send your submissions as pdf or word documents by email to the MHC mailbox (militaryhistoryconsortium@gmail.com), and copy in Prof. Marco Wyss (m.wyss@lancaster.ac.uk), Prof. Evert Kleynhans (kleynhans@sun.ac.za), and Prof. Walter Bruyère-Ostells (walter.bruyere-ostells@sciencespo-aix.fr).

The MHC

The MHC connects institutions, academics, and students engaged in the study of warfare and/or military organisations in the past. Its dual aim is to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas in order to strengthen international research cooperation, and a framework for joint teaching initiatives and programmes. The MHC’s membership is international, and its scope is global. While the consortium’s teaching and research agendas focus on the past, it seeks to address contemporary security challenges and inform related policy debates. It is only the study of war and the military in the past that enables us to understand and contextualise the present and thus prepare for the future.

For more information, please visit the MHC website or the Consortium's Linkedin profile.

Members

University of Amsterdam

University of Calgary

Stellenbosch University

Sciences Po Aix

Lancaster University

Norwich University

Iscte-University Institute of Lisbon

Sapienza University of Rome

Félix Houphouët-Boigny University Abidjan