by Phillips Payson O'Brien, Professor at the University of Saint Andrews

En collaboration avec la faculté de Philosophie et Sciences sociales de l’ULB, grâce à la générosité de feu le Baron Jean-Charles VELGE

What we are seeing in Ukraine today is both quite different technologically from World War II, but with important similarities in process. The growth in UAV technology, for instance, and Artificial Intelligence, has opened up a future of autonomous vehicles defining future combat. On the other hand, certain basic rules on range, accuracy and mass are the same as they have always been. This lecture will speculatively explore what has stayed the same in war since World War II, and what is changing in front of our very eyes.

Phillips Payson O'Brien teaches history and international relations at the University of Saint Andrews. In 2015, he published a major monograph with Cambridge University Press How the War Was Won, focusing on the logistical side of modern warfare during WWII. It seemed appropriate for the eleventh edition of the Chair to change the focus for once from the political, social and cultural aspects of warfare to military hardware, especially since Phillips Payson O’Brien has distinguished himself as a sharp analyst and commentator of the current war in Ukraine, among others through a series of articles in The Atlantic. He has done so with caution and with force, showing that historians can add to our understanding of the present and that, while history might not have straightforward lessons to teach to the present, it can offer a source of inspiration and a set of elements of comparison.

Jeudi 21 mars 2024, de 18h00 à 20h00

Auditoire R42.5.503 (DRION)
ULB - Campus du Solbosch - Bâtiment R42 - Niveau 5
Av. Franklin Roosevelt 42
1050 Ixelles

Entrée libre - Inscription souhaitée ici

Personne de contacte : com.phisoc@ulb.be

Pour plus d'informations, cliquez sur le lien suivant : https://phisoc.ulb.be/fr/actualites/international-chair-for-the-history-of-the-second-world-war-2024