Military Urbanism in Global Perspective, c.1700 to 2000 – July 2026.
On Friday 3 July 2026, 11:00AM – 5:45PM, in Room 101, Attenborough Tower, University of Leicester, there will be a workshop organised by THE CENTRE FOR URBAN HISTORY and supported by THE STANLEY BURTON CENTRE FOR HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDE STUDIES.
The workshop will be in hybrid format. If attending in person, please could you let Prashant Kimdambi pk64@le.ac.uk know for catering purposes by Monday 22 June. If you would like to attend online, please use the link below.
Microsoft Teams meeting
Join: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/344059621333296?p=DE8pb5sT6ib0lelLiF
Meeting ID: 344 059 621 333 296
Passcode: Vj6wz7fN
From the ‘military revolution’ of the early modern period to the present day, armed forces and the institutions around them have been a regular feature of urban life. For the most part, they have been folded into routines of work, housing and governance; at other times, they have taken catastrophic forms through sieges, bombardment, or occupation.
This workshop asks how military needs and practices left their mark on urban space, and how particular urban settings, in turn, set limits to, or remade, military power.
Our focus is on cities that lived with armies and other armed formations over time, rather than simply the impact of war itself on cities. These include places with garrisons, barracks districts, dockyards and training grounds; cities reshaped by colonial and postcolonial cantonments; towns dominated by bases or defence industries; and cities that were occupied, partitioned or repeatedly attacked. ‘The military’ is taken to include not only formal armies and navies, but also the wider infrastructures and professions that sustained them: transport and supply systems, engineering and medical services, intelligence and security organisations, and forms of policing and surveillance drawing on military models. A global view makes it possible to explore a range of urban sites in different parts of the world that were shaped and sustained by military presence. To this end, this workshop brings together scholars working on Ireland, India, Egypt, South Africa, the USA, and Australia.
WORKSHOP PROGRAMME
ROOM 101, ATTENBOROUGH TOWER
- 11 am – Tea/Coffee
- 11.20 – Welcome
Session 1 Chair: David Arnold (University of Warwick)
- 11.30 – Sophie Cooper (Queen’s University Belfast), ‘Hedges and Habits: The Gendered Permeability of Military Encampments in Ireland, the USA, and Australia’ [ONLINE]
- 12.00 – Amelia Clegg (History Lab, IHR), ‘Guardians of the Garrison Town: Coldstream Guards Middle Command Practices, Martial Law and Civilian Control in South Africa (1900-1902)’
- 12.30 – James Moore (CUH, Leicester), ‘Military occupation and urban security in Cairo, 1882-2011’
- 1 p.m. – Lunch
Session 2 Chair: Gavin Rand (University of Greenwich)
- 2.00 – Samira Sheikh (Vanderbilt University), ‘Fort, Ferry, Customs House: Urban Space and Insurgency in Mughal Bharuch, 1685’ [ONLINE]
- 2.30 – David Arnold (University of Warwick), ‘Milking the Military: Cantonment Dairies in British India, 1880-1940’
- 3.00 – Prashant Kidambi (CUH, Leicester), ‘Soldiers, Townsmen and Bazaars: Rethinking the Cantonment in Colonial South Asia’
- 3.30 – Tea/Coffee
Session 3 Chair: Rosemary Sweet (CUH, Leicester)
- 3.45 – Andrew Dorman (Trinity College Dublin), ‘The military and the city in eighteenth-century Ireland’
- 4.15 – Charles Ivar McGrath (University College Dublin) and Suzanne Forbes (Open University), ‘Mapping Ireland’s historic permanent army barracks, 1690-1922
- 4.45 – Break
- 5 – 5.45 pm – Roundtable
