The 35th annual World History Association conference
"Closed Borders and Global Connectivity"
Incheon, South Korea
June 25-27, 2026
Kwon Kun and Yi Hoe, Honil Gangni Yeokdae Gukdo Ji Do (“Map of Integrated Lands and Regions of Historical Countries and Capitals (of China), often referred to as the Kangnido map, Joseon Dynasty, 1402, the oldest extant Korean world map. This is the Honkōji copy created in Japan during the Edo period, c. 1560s (Honmyōji Temple, Kumamoto, Japan) Learn more about the Kagnido map.
The world is changing. The discipline of world history must respond to those changes.
In his 2005 article “Myths, Wagers, and Some Moral Implications of World History,” one of the World History Association’s founders, Jerry Bentley, noted that the world has been moving towards a state of globalization as long as the field has existed, noting that the general narrative is that “the intensity and range of cross-cultural interactions has generally increased over time.” Yet Bentley also praised modern historical scholarship for its “openness to examination and criticism from all angles.” The world history he called for “does not pretend to know the end of history.”
We find ourselves today in a world that many world historians did not predict: one that remains intensely interconnected through trade, migration, culture, and shared planetary futures, while globalization as a narrative and as a political project has faltered. Nationalism, protectionism, deportations, and regional conflict have all surged in ways that challenge the logic of global integration. In teaching and scholarly work alike, this reality asks us to rethink what it means to teach and study the global past in a world that no longer embraces globalization as an ideal or inevitability.
The Program Committee for this year’s conference invited proposals that explore this new terrain. We ask:
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How can we write, teach, and think about world history in a moment characterized both by global entanglement and anti-globalist politics?
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What historical precedents —such as empires, invasions, epidemics, diasporas, trade routes, or cross-cultural encounters—might help us imagine a world that is connected but not necessarily globalized in the modern sense?
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What models of both interconnection and interdiction have emerged or persisted outside the framework of globalization?
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How might the changing present force us to rethink historiographical frameworks about the past?
We are elated that the conference will feature two keynote addresses, two plenary sessions, and more than 60 panels with multiple presentations in each.
The 35th annual World History Association conference in Incheon, Korea, is made possible thanks to the collaboration and sponsorship of the following institutions and organizations:
