Amérique, Europe, Révolutions, Indépendance
et Commémorations dans l’espace Atlantique
Amérique, Europe, Révolutions, Indépendance
et Commémorations dans l’espace Atlantique
AMERICA2026 is a four-year collaborative program of scholarly events, publications and resources centred on the histories and memories of the American Revolution in comparative European and transatlantic perspective.
As the United States prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of its independence in 2026, AMERICA2026 aims to uncover, map, and analyse the networks and exchanges connecting the actors, the ideas and the legacies of the American Revolution across the Atlantic Ocean, from the mid-eighteenth century through the 1820s and in the present day.
It seeks to fully contribute to the debates and the cultural and academic productions that will accompany this commemorative moment and lead to critical reviews of the study of the American Revolution.
Based in France, this program connects senior and junior researchers from France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States for a series of academic conferences and collective publications, an exhibition, and an upcoming improved and interactive website, which will host information about events and networks as well as resources about the changing meaning of 1776.
About
AMERICA2026 (Amérique, Europe, Révolutions, Indépendance et Commémorations dans l’espace Atlantique) is a consortium of European and American scholars working together through a series of conferences and publications towards a collaborative reassessment of the European and North American historiographies of the American Revolution.
Partners are located across
The consortium will meet often and regularly over the next four years until the Paris conference in the fall of 2026, to produce an unprecedented historiographical panorama of the history and the legacies of the American Revolution since the 18th century in Europe, in constant dialogue with US partners whose input will bring discussions up to the present day. The July 2026 international conference will be the place to commemorate and discuss the contemporaneous impact, the history and the legacy of the American Revolution in Europe.
"The consortium’s findings will be published in part in the book series The Revolutionary Age, edited by Francis D. Cogliano and Patrick Griffin."
AMERICA2026 is a consortium of scholars at various stages of their careers specialized in the history and culture of Europe and the Americas in the modern era and up to the present. This interdisciplinary program of events and publications centered on the history, memory and legacy of the American Revolution is coordinated by a steering committee based in France and headed by Professor Bertrand Van Ruymbeke at the university of Paris 8.
Bertrand
VAN RUYMBEKE
Bertrand Van Ruymbeke is professor of American history and civilization at Université Paris 8 (Vincennes Saint-Denis) and honorary member (senior) of the Institut Universitaire de France (class of 2015-20).
He is the author of From New Babylon to Eden. The Huguenots and Their Migration to Colonial South Carolina (University of South Carolina Press, 2006), L'Amérique avant les États-Unis. Une histoire de l'Amérique anglaise 1497-1776 (Flammarion 2013, rev. paperback ed. 2016), and Histoire des États-Unis. De 1492 à nos jours (Tallandier, 2018, rev. paperback ed. 2021, 2 vols.). He co-edited Memory and Identity. The Huguenots in France and in the Atlantic Diaspora (University of South Carolina Press, 2003), Constructing Early Modern Empires : Proprietary Ventures in the Atlantic World, 1550-1700 (Brill, 2007), Naissance de l’Amérique du Nord. Les Actes fondateurs, 1607-1776 (Les Indes savantes, 2008), The Atlantic World of Anthony Benezet 1713-1784. From French Reformation to North American Quaker (Brill, 2016) with Marie-Jeanne Rossignol.
EricSCHNAKENBOURG
Eric Schnakenbourg is professor of modern history at Nantes University and director of the Center for Research in International and Atlantic History (CRHIA).
He is a specialist of the history of international relations in Europe and the Atlantic World in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the author of Le Monde Atlantique: un espace en movement XVe-XVIIIe siècle (Armand Colin, 2021), and Entre la guerre et la paix : Neutralité et relations internationales, XVII-XVIIIe siècle (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2013)…
FrançoiseCOSTE
Françoise Coste is professor of American politics and civilization at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès and a specialist of the history of the US presidency and US conservatism.
She is the author of Reagan (Editions Perrin, 2015) and La présidence des États-Unis de Franklin Roosevelt à George W. Bush (1933-2006) (Éditions du Temps, 2007). She is the editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal ORDA (L’Ordinaire des Amériques) and has co-edited three of its special issues entitled « 1968 dans les Amériques » in 2014, « Innovation, Identités, Recompositions ...
PatrickSPERO
Patrick Spero is the Librarian and Director of the Library & Museum of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. As a scholar of early American history, Dr. Spero specializes in the history of the American Revolution.
He is the author of Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the American West, 1765-1776 (Norton,2018) and Frontier Country: The Politics of War in Early Pennsylvania (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) and the edited anthology The American Revolution Reborn: New Perspectives for the Twenty-First Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).
AgnèsDELAHAYE
Agnès Delahaye is professor of American history and civilization at the Université Lumière Lyon 2 and a specialist of American colonial history.
She is the author of Settling the Good Land. Promotion and Governance in John Winthrop’s New England (Brill, 2020) and of articles and book chapters in French and in English on the historiography of the colonial period, exceptionalism and settler colonial history.
Susanne
Lachenicht
Susanne Lachenicht is professor of Early Modern History at Bayreuth University, Germany. In 2002, she received her PhD from Heidelberg University. Her research focuses on press and media during the French Revolution and minorities in Europe and the Atlantic World. She has been a visiting fellow/professor at the Université de Toulouse II, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, the Université d’Angers and at All Souls College, Oxford. She is the co-founder of the Summer Academy of Atlantic History and was, from 2012–14, president of the European Early American Studies Association.
Her publications include Information und Propaganda. Die Presse deutscher Jakobiner im Elsaß (München 2004), Hugenotten in Europa und Nordamerika. Migration und Integration in der Frühen Neuzeit (Frankfurt am Main, New York, Chicago 2010), (as ed.) Religious Refugees in Europa, Asia and North America (Hamburg 2007), (as ed.) Diaspora Identities. Exile, Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in Past and Present (Frankfurt am Main, New York, Chicago 2009), Die Französische Revolution (Darmstadt 2012/2016), (as ed.) Europeans Engaging the Atlantic. Knowledge and Trade (Frankfurt am Main, New York 2014), (as ed. with Dagmar Freist), Connecting Worlds and People. Early Modern Diasporas (London: Routledge, 2016), (as ed. with Charlotte Lerg and Michael Kimmage) The TransAtlantic Reconsidered (Manchester University Press 2018/paperback 2020), (as ed. with Mathilde Monge) Nations et empires, thematic issue of Diasporas. Migrations, circulations, histoire 34/2 (2019), (as ed. with Marianne Amar, Isabelle Lacoue-Labarthe, Mathilde Monge and Annelise Rodrigo) Négocier l’accueil /Negotiating asylum and accommodation, thematic issue of Diasporas. Migrations, circulations, histoire 35/2 (2020) and (as ed. with Guido Braun) Spies, Espionage and Secret Diplomacy in the Early Modern Period (Kohlhammer 2021).
CarineLounissi
Carine Lounissi is Associate Professor of American history at the University of Rouen-Normandie (France). Her research focuses on intellectual history at the end of the 18th century and more specifically on transatlantic intellectual collaborations and debates during the Age of Revolutions. She has published two books on one of the major figures of these transatlantic circulations, Thomas Paine. The most recent one, relying on new sources and archives by and about Paine, is entitled Thomas Paine and the French Revolution (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Her current project is devoted to the reception of the American Revolution in France from 1776 onward.
She has recently published contributions on this topic, including « Publier sur la Révolution américaine en France (1778-1788) : entre diplomatie culturelle et censure monarchique » Mémoires du livre / Studies in Book Culture>, volume 11, numéro 1, automne 2019 and "The First French 'Americanists' of the 1770s and 1780s, the American Revolution and Atlantic History: Beyond Mirages in the West", Revue française d’études françaises 173, 2022. She has co-edited, with Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, the special issue of this journal about "Europe and the American Revolution". She is also assistant editor of the Thomas Paine Papers to be published by Princeton University Press in 2025.https://eriac.univ-rouen.fr/author/carine-lounissi
Florence
Petroff
Florence Petroff is associate professor in early modern history at the University of La Rochelle. Her research focuses on the American Revolution and the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world.
She is the author of articles and book chapters on the constitutional debate during the imperial crisis, from both British and American perspectives. Her PhD dissertation on The American Revolution and Scotland will be published with Honoré Champion.
| Name | University | Name | University |
|---|---|---|---|
| Virginie Adane | Nantes Université | Manuela Albertone | University of Turin |
| Catia Antunes | University of Leiden | Trevor Burnard | Wilberforce Institute University of Hull |
| Françoise Coste | Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès | Manuel Covo | University of Southern California Santa Barbara |
| Iris De Rode | Mount Vernon et université Paris 8 | Agnes Delahaye | Université Lumière Lyon 2 |
| Caroline Galland | Université Paris Nanterre | Gérard Hugues | Aix Marseille Université |
| Susanne Lachenicht | University of Bayreuth | Csaba Levai | Debrecen, Hongrie |
| Carine Lounissi | Université de Rouen | Brendan McConville | David Center for the Study of the American Revolution ::: Boston University and David Center, Philadelphia |
| Emilie Mitran | Aix Marseille Université | Florence Petroff | La Rochelle Université |
| Pauline Pilote | Université de Bretagne Sud | Ghislain Potriquet | Université de Strasbourg |
| Neil Safier | Brown University | Steven Sarson | Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3 |
| Nele Sawallisch | University of Trier | Eric Schnakenbourg | Nantes Université |
| Eileen Speijer | Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris | Patrick Spero | American Philosphical Society |
| Hugo Toudic | Université de Paris Sorbonne - CNRS | Agnes Trouillet | Université Paris Nanterre |
| Bertrand Van Ruymbeke | Université Paris 8 |
| Name | University |
|---|---|
| Virginie Adane | Nantes Université |
| Manuela Albertone | University of Turin |
| Catia Antunes | University of Leiden |
| Trevor Burnard | Wilberforce Institute University of Hull |
| Françoise Coste | Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès |
| Manuel Covo | University of Southern California Santa Barbara |
| Iris De Rode | Mount Vernon et université Paris 8 |
| Agnes Delahaye | Université Lumière Lyon 2 |
| Caroline Galland | Université Paris Nanterre |
| Gérard Hugues | Aix Marseille Université |
| Susanne Lachenicht | University of Bayreuth |
| Csaba Levai | Debrecen, Hongrie |
| Carine Lounissi | Université de Rouen |
| Brendan McConville | David Center for the Study of the American Revolution ::: Boston University and David Center, Philadelphia |
| Emilie Mitran | Aix Marseille Université |
| Florence Petroff | La Rochelle Université |
| Pauline Pilote | Université de Bretagne Sud |
| Ghislain Potriquet | Université de Strasbourg |
| Neil Safier | Brown University |
| Steven Sarson | Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3 |
| Nele Sawallisch | University of Trier |
| Eric Schnakenbourg | Nantes Université |
| Eileen Speijer | Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris |
| Patrick Spero | American Philosphical Society |
| Hugo Toudic | Université de Paris Sorbonne - CNRS |
| Agnes Trouillet | Université Paris Nanterre |
| Bertrand Van Ruymbeke | Université Paris 8 |
Our partners are based across France, Europe and the United States, connecting scholars and students of 1776 and its legacies
America2026 aims to disseminate renewed knowledge about the American Revolution and its commemorations. Contact up for more information about upcoming events and how you can take part.
