The Sydney Ideas forum titled Why History Matters: Historians remap the world promises to be a fascinating panel discussion by some of the world's top historians about significant events that have shaped our history.

The historians, including the University of Sydney's Professor Glenda Sluga and Professors David Armitage and Jocye E Chaplin from Harvard University, will review the way history has traditionally been recorded. They will also review their understanding of the connections between people and places and the historical ways regions throughout the world can be remapped, re-examining the concept of "place" and "identity".

Specialities amongst the speakers include: civil wars, international migration, the British empire, environmental history and research into the international campaigns aimed at eradicating diseases such as smallpox.

Why History Matters: Historians Remap the World is a Sydney Ideas/Arts Matters forum co-presented with the University of Sydney's Faculty of Arts and will be held at the Seymour Centre.

Panellists include:

Glenda Sluga, Professor of International History, University of Sydney

Glenda Sluga has published widely on the cultural history of international relations, and is currently researching two books, one on the Congress of Vienna, and the other on the United Nations. Publications include The Problem of Trieste and the Italo-Yugoslavian Border: Difference, Identity and Sovereignty in Twentieth-Century Europe (2001) and The Nation, Psychology and International Politics (2006).

David Armitage, Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History, Harvard University

David Armitage is currently working on three books: a history of the idea of civil war from Rome to Iraq, a study of the foundations of modern international thought, and an edition of John Locke's colonial writings. Among his nine books to date are The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (2009) and The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (2007).

Joyce E Chaplin, James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History, Harvard University

Joyce Chaplin's interests include the history of science and in environmental history. She is the author of An Anxious Pursuit: Agricultural Innovation and Modernity in the Lower South, 1730-1815 (1993), Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (2001), and The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius (2006). She is currently writing a history of circumnavigation.

Erez Manela, Professor of History, Harvard University

Erez Manela's current research is on international campaigns against disease, specifically the global campaign to eradicate smallpox and its significance for postwar international history. He is the author of The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (2007).

Sunil Amrith, Lecturer in History Birkbeck College, University of London

Sunil Amrith's research is on the history of the Bay of Bengal region since the late eighteenth century, currently focusing on the history of migration and cultural circulation between south India and Southeast Asia. Sunil Amrith's earlier work was on the history of public health in South and Southeast Asia. His book, Decolonizing International Health: India and Southeast Asia, 1930-65 (2006) examined the international exchange of ideas about health in Asia in the mid-twentieth century.

Event details:
What: Why History Matters: Historians remap the world, a Sydney Ideas forum
When: 6.30pm, Monday 26 July
Where: Seymour Centre, corner City Road and Cleveland Street, Chippendale
Cost: $20 adult/$15 concession. Free for University of Sydney students, staff and alumni.
Bookings: 9351 7940 or on the Sydney Ideas website
Media enquiries: Katrina O'Brien, 9036 7842,