The Center for Cold War Studies and International History (CCWS) of the University of California at Santa Barbara, the George Washington University Cold War Group (GWCW), and the LSE Cold War Studies Project (CWSP) of the London School of Economics and Political Science are pleased to announce their 2025 International Graduate Student Conference on the Cold War, to take place at the University of California, Santa Barbara, from May 8 to May 10, 2025.

The conference is an excellent opportunity for graduate students to present papers and receive critical feedback from peers and experts in the field. We encourage submissions by graduate students working on any aspect of the Cold War, broadly defined. Of particular interest are papers that employ newly available primary sources or nontraditional methodologies. To be considered, each prospective participant should submit a two-page proposal and a brief academic c.v. (in Word or pdf format) to Salim Yaqub at syaqub@ucsb.edu by Monday, February 3, 2025. Notification of acceptance will occur by Friday, February 28. Successful applicants will be expected to email their papers (no longer than 25 pages) by Friday, April 4. The author of the strongest paper will be awarded the Saki Ruth Dockrill Memorial Prize of £100 to be spent on books in any form. The winner will also have an opportunity to publish the paper as an article in the journal Cold War History. For further information, please contact Salim Yaqub at the aforementioned email address.

Students should not apply to the conference unless they are prepared, if admitted, to attend the conference for its full substantive duration. The event will begin with a welcoming reception at 6 pm on Thursday, May 8, and continue until the early evening of Saturday, May 10. If travel schedules necessitate missing the Thursday evening reception, this is permissible. But student participants must be present all day Friday and Saturday.

The chairs and commentators of the conference sessions will be prominent faculty members from UCSB, GWU, LSE, and elsewhere. UCSB will cover the accommodation costs of admitted student participants for the duration of the conference, but students will need to cover the costs of their travel to Santa Barbara.

In 2003, UCSB and GWU first joined their separate spring conferences, and two years later LSE became a co-sponsor. The three cold war centers now hold a jointly sponsored conference each year, alternating among the three campuses. For more information about our three programs, you may visit their respective Web sites at:

http://www.history.ucsb.edu/ccws/ for CCWS https://ieres.elliott.gwu.edu/programs/gw-cold-war-group/ for GWCW https://www.lse.ac.uk/International-History/ColdWarStudies for CWSP