Professor Daniel Laqua

Daniel's research deals with transnational movements and associations in 19th/20th-century Europe. He is particularly interested in competing conceptualisations of global order, the ways in which campaigners sought to effect change at the international level, and the relationship between nationalism and internationalism. Daniel has special expertise in the history of international organisations, covering the work of the League of Nations as well as the associations set up by activists. He has edited three volumes in this field: Internationalism Reconfigured: Transnational Ideas and Movements between the World Wars (London, 2011), International Organizations and Global Civil Society: Histories of the Union of International Associations (London, 2019; with Wouter Van Acker and Christophe Verbruggen) and Intellectual Cooperation at the League of Nations: Shaping Cultural and Political Relations (Geneva, 2025; with Martin Grandjean) . Moreover, he is currently the Principal Investigator of two international research project in this area. The first of them is entitled 'Global Governance, Trust and Democratic Engagement in Past and Present' and run within the framework of the Transatlantic Platform for the Social Sciences and Humanities (with funding from research councils in Canada, Switzerland, the UK and the United States). The second project – 'Historicising Earth System Governance:  International Organisations, the Environment and the Geopolitics of Expertise, 1950s–90s' – is funded by the British Academy's International Interdisciplinary Research Projects scheme, with partners in the Chile, the Czech Republic, Denmark and the United States.

Daniel first monograph – The Age of Internationalism and Belgium, 1880–1930: Peace, Progress and Prestige – was published by Manchester University Press in 2013. The study examined European internationalism through the prism of congresses, conferences and campaigns that took place in Belgium. Moreover, in a range of articles, he has covered the efforts of pacifists, humanitarians, revolutionaries, student activists and intellectuals who construed their aims as transcending national categories. Much of this work informs his second monograph, Activism across Borders since 1870: Causes, Campaigns and Conflicts in and beyond Europe (Bloomsbury, 2023). Daniel has also co-edited special journal issues on histories of humanitarianism (Journal of Modern European History, 2014), transnational solidarities (European Review of History, 2014), challenges to state socialism in the 1970s and 1980s (Labour History Review, 2021 and East Central Europe, 2023) and on the relationship between youth and internationalism (Social History, 2023). With project lead Jessica Reinisch and fellow co-leads Ria Kapoor and Margot Tudor, he is runnig a research network on 'Rethinking Internationalism: Histories and Pluralities', supported via an AHRC Curiosity Grant.

At present, Daniel is working on the history of student activism in the period from the interwar years to the early Cold War. Specific findings from this work feature in The English Historical Review (2017) and Social History (2023). His research in this field has generated funded research projects (run together with Georgina Brewis, UCL), collaborations with the National Union of Students (NUS) and the Workers' Educational Association (WEA) as well as two edited volumes that are under contract with Liverpool University Press. With Isabella Löhr (ZZF Potsdam / FU Berlin), he is running the project 'University Students as Migrants: A New History of Educational Mobility in Western Europe, 1960s–1980s', which is jointly funded by the AHRC and the German Research Foundation (DFG).  

• Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
• The Multiple Levels of Cultural Diplomacy: Weimar Germany’s Exhibition Moment, 1927–1928, Laqua, D. 1 Dec 2025
• Rethinking Transnational Activism through Regional Perspectives: Reflections, Literatures and Cases, Davies, T., Laqua, D., Framke, M., Richard, A., Oliart, P., Skinner, K., Requejo de Lamo, P., Kramm, R., Alston, C., Hurst, M. Dec 2024, In: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
• Activism across Borders since 1870: Causes, Campaigns and Conflicts in and beyond Europe, Laqua, D. 7 Sep 2023
• The politics of transnational student mobility: youth, education and activism in Ghana, 1957–1966, Laqua, D. 2 Jan 2023, In: Social History
• Transnational Dimensions of a ‘German Case’: The Expatriation of Wolf Biermann and the Politics of Solidarity in the 1970s, Laqua, D. Dec 2021, In: Labour History Review
• Rebuilding the Universities after the Great War: Ex-Service Students, Scholarships and the Reconstruction of Student Life in England, Brewis, G., Hellawell, S., Laqua, D. 2020, In: History
• International Organizations and Global Civil Society: Histories of the Union of International Associations, Laqua, D., Van Acker, W., Verbruggen, C. 21 Mar 2019
• Activism in the 'Students' League of Nations': International Student Politics and the Confédération Internationale des Étudiants, 1919–1939, Laqua, D. 4 Jul 2017, In: The English Historical Review
• Rocking Against the Right: Political Activism and Popular Music in West Germany, 1979–1980, Laqua, D. 1 Oct 2018, In: History Workshop Journal
• Democratic Politics and the League of Nations: The Labour and Socialist International as a Protagonist of Interwar Internationalism, Laqua, D. May 2015, In: Contemporary European History

• Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
• Historicising Earth System Governance: International Organisations, the Environment and the Geopolitics of Expertise, 1950s–1990s, Laqua, D. (Principal Investigator), British Academy, 01/04/26 - 31/03/28, £299,930.00
• Grassroots Diplomacy in the Face of Global Disorder: Historical Perspectives, Laqua, D. (Principal Investigator), British Academy, 01/04/25 - 31/03/26, £2,500.00
• University Students as Migrants: A New History of Educational Mobility in Western Europe, 1960s–1980s, Laqua, D. (Principal Investigator), Arts & Humanities Research Council, 04/02/25 - 03/02/28, £352,181.00
• Rethinking Internationalism: Histories and Pluralities, Laqua, D. (Principal Investigator), Arts & Humanities Research Council, 01/12/24 - 30/04/26, £18,799.00
• Global Governance, Trust and Democratic Engagement in Past and Present, Laqua, D. (Principal Investigator), Economic and Social Research Council, 01/10/24 - 30/09/26, £336,111.00
• Rehearsals for Democracy: Student Life in Central and Eastern Europe, 1919–1923, Laqua, D. (Principal Investigator), British Educational Research Association, 01/05/23 - 30/04/24, £5,000.00
• University access and student life in the aftermath of the Great War: local, national and transnational dimensions of Scheme for the Higher Education of Ex-Service Students, Laqua, D. (Principal Investigator), The Society for Educational Studies, 01/01/20 - 31/12/20, £2,200.00
• University access and student life in the aftermath of the Great War: local, national and transnational dimensions of Scheme for the Higher Education of Ex-Service Students, Laqua, D. (Principal Investigator), The Society for Educational Studies, 01/01/19 - 31/12/19, £9,963.00
• British ex-service students and the rebuilding of Europe, 1918 – 1926, Laqua, D. (Principal Investigator), University of Hertfordshire, 01/08/17 - 31/12/17, £19,452.00

• Paul Davy Urban Violence in the 1920s: a Comparison of Newcastle upon Tyne, Bremen and Seville Start Date: 01/10/2023
• Emily Sharp British Student Activism and International Solidarity, 1958–2005: South Africa, Chile and Palestine Start Date: 01/10/2020 End Date: 08/07/2025
• Paul Davy Urban Violence in the 1920s: a Comparison of Newcastle upon Tyne, Bremen and Seville Start Date: 01/10/2023 End Date: 17/10/2025

• History PhD
• History MSt
• History BA (Hons)
• Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy