Armed internationalists and transnational volunteering in the twentieth century

• Department of History

The program features Professors Morten Heiberg (University of Copenhagen) and Enrico Acciai (University of Rome, Torvergata), who will present the findings of their project titled 'Foreign Fighters: Past, Present, and Future', funded by the Carlsberg Foundation in Denmark, over the course of 2018 to 2023.

'Armed Internationalists' is a project that explores the extraordinary lives of left-wing volunteers who fought in not just one, but multiple conflicts across the globe during the mid 20th century. Utilising previously unpublished archival material, Morten Heiberg, Enrico Acciai and Carl-Henrik Bjerström follow these individual soldiers through military conflicts that were, in most cases, geographically centred on individual countries but nonetheless evinced a crucial transnational dimension. From the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979, the authors marshal these diverse case studies to create a conceptual framework through which to better understand the networks and recruitment patterns of transnational volunteering. They argue that the Spanish Civil War created a model for this transnational left-wing military volunteering and that this experience shaped the global left responses to a range of conflicts throughout the twentieth century.

Professors Morten Heiberg and Enrico Acciai will discuss their recently published book, Armed Internationalists: Transnational Volunteering in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2025). 

Please register to get a seat or the ZOOM link