AHRC-Network Principle Investigators Mark Cornwall & André Krischer
Since the ancient world, ‘treason’ has been a ubiquitous concept in human history. How traitors have been interpreted tells us much about the character of any regime and the power structures in any society. It reveals the regime’s relationship with its citizens. ‘Treason’ also serves as a touchstone for that regime’s (in)stability, highlighting the evolving threats which a state imagines in terms of its domestic and foreign security. Yet despite the topicality of treason in our present-day world – as the ultimate crime or in violent political rhetoric – the subject is still conceptually under-researched.
The Impact and Heritage of Treason
Pavilion Room, St Antony’s College Oxford, 30 April – 1 May 2026
This workshop is the third and final meeting of the AHRC Research Network “Writing a New History of Treason.” Building on our previous discussions about the legal frameworks and cultural representations of treason, we now turn to the question of what treason does over time. Accusations of treason are not contained by the moment of their articulation. They generate consequences that extend far beyond the courtroom or the scaffold – shaping political cultures, legal traditions, and collective memory across generations. Treason trials produce martyrs and villains; sites of punishment become places of heritage and contestation; legal categories forged in one context migrate to others, often with lasting effects. The heritage of treason is never settled: cases are remembered, forgotten, rehabilitated, or reinstrumentalized according to changing political needs. This workshop explores the afterlives of treason – how accusations, trials, and punishments have reverberated through different societies, how treason has been inscribed in legal archives, built environments, and national narratives, and how its long-term impact has been contested from antiquity to the present.
Mark Cornwall (University of Southampton) André Krischer (University of Freiburg)