When, how and why did the expectation of exponential economic growth emerge historically? This article explores this question through a transnational historical analysis of economic and policy-making expertise within the debates of the industrialized countries’ think tank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and its predecessor, the OEEC. It focuses in particular on the setting of growth targets in the years 1952, 1961, and 1970. These targets not only illustrate the escalatory logic of exponential growth but also highlight the changing concepts, justifications, and implications that mark the (re-)making of the economic growth paradigm at key junctures in postwar history.

From the 1760s, the question of parliamentary reform in Britain concerning the amendment and extension of suffrage was an important topic of differing intensity. It was a so-called extra-parliamentary movement which endeavoured to reach its objective by means of petitions. The right to petition was an important part of British basic rights contained in the Bill of Rights of 1689. However, the radical reformers of the 1790s who demanded parliamentary reform differed in objectives from their predecessors. The aims of the new radicals were annual parliamentary elections and universal suffrage. Their objective was to achieve parliamentary reform by legal and constitutional means, while openly rejecting violent revolutionary methods. Membership consisted mainly of the working class, with unlimited entry to these strictly organised societies. These societies were so unique precisely because they rejected political exclusivity. The topic of my work is focused on the period of the Edinburgh Conventions which were held three times between 1792 and 1793. Their aim was not to replace the British Parliament with a new legislature according to the French example, but an endeavour to act together on a plan of reform and then to draw up a petition to Parliament. Nevertheless, the last Convention was forcibly dissolved by local authorities and their leading members were brought before a court and sentenced to fourteen years’ transportation in the subsequent political process.

Research training, seminars, lectures, conferences and events in one handy guide.

Freie Universität Berlin, 18–19 March 2016 Over the course of the twentieth century, outer space has developed into a predominant site of utopian thought and futuristic expansion scenarios. Arguing that space transformed into a place where competing visions of the future were projected, posited and played out by experts and the public alike, the final conference of the Emmy Noether Research Group “The Future in the Stars: European Astroculture and Extraterrestrial Life in the Twentieth Century” at Freie Universität Berlin will examine the rise and fall of the European Space Age from the interwar years through the Post-Apollo period. Featuring presentations by group members and invited guests, the symposium pursues a double aim. As the project's closing event, it will take stock of individual and collective contributions to the concerted historicization of outer space undertaken since the group's establishment in 2010. It will evaluate to what extent 'astroculture' as a concept, research agenda and a new field of historical research has been successfully integrated into mainstream twentieth-century historiography. Addressing political, cultural, technological and transcendental aspects of space thought and spaceflight, the symposium also examines the existence and potential characteristics of a particularly West-European variant of the global Space Age. Focusing on the role outer space played in the making of the past century's polymorphic and protean futures, it will discuss the transformation of these past planetary futures into today's planetized present. Conference speakers include Paul Ceruzzi (Washington, DC), Martin Collins (Washington, DC), Martina Heßler (Hamburg), Dirk van Laak (Gießen), Michael Neufeld (Washington, DC), Helmuth Trischler (Munich) and Helmut Zander (Fribourg).

13-52 Panel: Urban Sensescapes, ASEEES, Chicago/IL, November 2017 The paper introduces smell-issues and olfactory nuisances emerging in East Central Europe in the interwar period, focusing on the city of Lublin in Eastern Poland. The paper discusses urban scents and sensibilities, focusing in particular on what Lublin's courtyard smells tell us about the condition, development an mindset of a Polish city in the interwar period.