ISHA’s Goals

The activity of ISHA has social and academic motivations. ISHA is committed to encouraging international co-operation and understanding through a more objective and tolerant study of history. ISHA seeks to create and co-ordinate means of co-operation and exchange between history students and young people of all backgrounds.

ISHA believes that the comprehension of history is an integral part in the creation of mutual understanding between different nations and social groups. It is our strong hope that personal connections between history students and therefore future historians, history teachers, and intellectuals with a background in historical studies, can promote the achievement of this aim.

ISHA considers that the exchange of knowledge and the cognisance of different viewpoints can offer an academic contribution to the quality of history teaching.

ISHA's main academic aims

1. Advancement of the contact between students from different countries, thereby breaking the borders of national-oriented history teaching in favour of a more international approach.
2. Promotion of the co-operation of history students interested in the same fields of history.
3. Offering international publication channels for history students.
4. Increasing the interest in lesser known areas of history.

ISHA’s main academic activities

The highlights among the annual activities of ISHA are the seminars. In addition to the Annual Conference - which takes place every spring and includes a General Assembly of ISHA - there are normally three seminars a year, one in summer, autumn and winter. The seminars work like the annual conference, but take a smaller number of participants. The conference and the seminars are organised around a specific academic theme, and involve workshops, discussions, presentations and lectures. At each seminar, there is also an State of Affairs meeting to discuss organisational matters.

ISHA’s publications

A collection of papers presented at each ISHA Seminar and Annual Conference is published by the organising section of the respective meeting.
In addition, ISHA edits a journal, the Carnival, issued by students, for students, with students’ contributions. The Carnival is an English language, independent academic journal distributed at universities across Europe. All members of any established or prospective ISHA section can publish in Carnival.

What is an ISHA section?

An ISHA section is an association of students and young graduates in history and/or related fields from a university or a group of universities and institutes in the same city that pay the annual membership fee, participate in the ISHA activities, including seminars, conferences, other meetings, summer archaeological camps and contribute to ISHA publications.

Joining ISHA

Why to join ISHA? ISHA offers you:

• The chance to meet history interested students from different countries and historiographical traditions. Thus ISHA provides its members with an international perspective on history, on both its common points and its different local and/or regional specificity.
• The possibility to participate in student seminars and conferences, present papers and launch discussions on your specific topic of interest, a refreshing intellectual challenge that can be a good exercise for the future participation in scientific meetings.
• The opportunity to publish articles, reviews and debates in an international English language journal distributed in a large number of university libraries.
• Last, but not least, you will have the chance to visit new places, learn about different cultures and traditions other way than tourists do, make new friends and spend good moments in their company.

How to become an ISHA section

If you already have a students association whose aims and interests are compatible to ISHA, you can become an ISHA member as such. If on the contrary you decide to form a completely new structure in your own university or town, you have all the liberty to choose its form and internal regulations. ISHA will provide assistantship to any prospective member throughout the entire organisation and affiliation process. Willing to insure a high degree of transparency in its communication with prospective members, ISHA welcomes those interested to attend its activities even before their concrete affiliation.