If the First World War was a war of empires, then it was also a war of colonial encounters.

Away from the front lines, soldiers from different corners of the British Empire occupied new ‘contact zones’ during this period of global mobilisation. On troopships, in ports, in military camps and hospitals, in cafes and city streets, new spaces for interaction, fleeting moments or ongoing relationships, became an everyday part of the First World War experience.

What did these interactions mean for the people who experienced them? In this talk, Dr Anna Maguire will explore some of these cultural encounters and reveal how they were documented, remembered and perceived.

Dr Anna Maguire is a historian of migration, empire and war. She is the author of Contact Zones of the First World War: Cultural Encounters across the British Empire.With Santanu Das and Daniel Steinbach, she is the editor of Colonial Encounters in a Time of Global Conflict, 1914-1918. She is currently writing a history of sanctuary in Britain, 1951-2000, as part of her Leverhulme postdoctoral research on refugees and charity at Queen Mary University of London.