The 2023 Bayly Memorial Lecture by Professor Francesca Trivellato

This biennial lecture is given in memory of the late Professor Sir Christopher Bayly (1970; Honorary Fellow 2014). This year's speaker, Professor Francesca Trivellato, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Early Modern European History at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), chose to address the question ‘Can we rescue global history from the law of diminishing returns?’ and ruminated on the status of global history today, following its “seemingly irresistible rise”. She argues that historians have to acknowledge the implicit paradoxes facing global history and treat it as “a lever" capable of generating new questions, rather than a discipline or a method in its own right.