Social and Labour History News

Rouen/France

Pour la deuxième année consécutive se tient le séminaire « Les marxismes dans l’histoire ». L’histoire des marxismes a connu depuis quelques années de multiples renouvellements. A distance de l’opprobre consécutif à l’effondrement de l’Union soviétique comme de l’apologie « marxiste-léniniste » qui avait forgé un dogme marginalisant toute approche critique, les recherches autour de Marx et des marxismes connaissent une certaine dynamique depuis une dizaine d’années, notamment dans le monde anglophone mais aussi dans plusieurs pays, dont la France. Ce séminaire pluridisciplinaire entend y prendre part, en mobilisant des chercheurs français et étrangers investis dans ce domaine. Les différentes séances sont construites autour d’une thématique, en rapport avec les fonds d’archives conservés à l’Imec. Elles visent à interroger l’histoire intellectuelle et des pensées critiques à partir de Marx.

 

Hors des étudiants de l’université de Rouen Normandie, l’inscription est obligatoire pour venir assister sur place ou pour suivre à distance reservation@imec-archives.com

 

PROGRAMME

27 Juin 2025. Lexiques de Marx : la revue Études de marxologie (1959-1994) Journée d’étude consacrée à la revue Études de marxologie dirigée par Maximilien Rubel. Organisée en partenariat avec l’ISMEA .

 

13h30 - Ouverture Les marxismes en revue (François Bordes et Jean-Numa Ducange)

13h45 - Éric Sevault, L'inspiration éditoriale des "Études de marxologie"

14h15 - Louis Janover, grand témoin

14h45 – pause

15h - Jean-Louis Perrault, Perroux, le marxisme et les "Études de marxologie"

15h30 - Julien Chuzeville, Maximilien Rubel historien 16h Conclusions et perspectives

 

Organisateurs : Jean-Numa Ducange (Professeur d’histoire contemporaine, Université de Rouen Normandie et IUF) et François Bordes (Docteur en histoire contemporaine du CHSP, Directeur de la recherche à l’Imec).

Institutions partenaires : Université de Rouen Normandie (GRHIS et IRIHS), Institut Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine, Institut Universitaire de France.

 

 Restant à votre disposition pour toute information complémentaire, François Delisle

--

IE en production et analyse de données

Groupe de Recherche Histoire (UR 3831)

Université de Rouen Normandie

New York African Studies Association (NYASA): An Association for the Study of Africa and its Diaspora; The Center for Gender and Intercultural Studies (CGIS), State University of New York, Cortland, Cortland, 6-9 November 2025 Resistance and Resilience: Resource Extraction, Arms Trade, and Militarism in Africa and the Global South

New York African Studies Association (NYASA): An Association for the Study of Africa and its Diaspora and The Center for Gender and Intercultural Studies (CGIS), State University of New York, Cortland invite you to the NYASA 47th ANNUAL CONFERENCE on November 7 – 8, 2025 "Resistance and Resilience: Resource Extraction, Arms Trade, and Militarism in Africa and the Global South".

Resistance and Resilience: Resource Extraction, Arms Trade, and Militarism in Africa and the Global South

The consolidation of democratic rule on the African continent has faced significant challenges because of militarization driven or shaped by both internal and external actors. The seeds of this militarism were the violent struggles during colonization and the “Cold War” global interests that resulted in hot wars on the continent. For example, independent African countries such as Angola fought protracted internal wars shaped and fueled by Cold War geopolitics. On the eve of Africa’s political independence, European powers negotiated agreements that allowed them to maintain iron-grip control over the security apparatuses of African nations ensuring that African soldiers were trained according to Europe’s military doctrines. For instance, The Anglo Nigerian Defense Pact of 1960 and the Franco-Ivorian Defense Agreement of 1961 had provisions for both military training and the presence of British military bases in Nigeria and French military bases in Côte d’Ivoire.

In the post-9/11 period, the United States sought to expand its military footprint on the continent under the guise of fighting terrorism and narco-trafficking. According to United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) spokesperson John Manley in 2020, the U.S. has an archipelago of 15 “enduring locations” and 12 less-permanent “contingency locations” in Africa. In addition to officially recognized bases such as Camp Lemonnier situated next to Djibouti–Ambouli International Airport, the US also has secret military outposts across the continent, often in disregard of the sovereignty of African nations.

Not to be outranked on the continent is China’s growing military influence. In 2017, China established its first military base in Africa in Djibouti, near Camp Lemonnier, to support its regional naval operations. China as well as Russia are significant suppliers of military arms to the continent. Once again, the heightened interests of the different Superpowers on the continent are turning Africa into a proxy battleground, similar to the former Cold War dynamics.

The militarization of the continent has severe consequences. It has destabilized and continues to destabilize many nations creating economic hardships thereby spurring both internal migrations and the migration of African people to Europe, the United States, Israel, Asia, and other locations. These foreign interventions along with continuing conflicts on the continent enable the untaxed extraction of African resources, the undermining of local leadership, and the erosion of both African democratic institutions and democratic aspirations.

NYASA: Association for the Study of Africa and its Diaspora invites scholars, researchers, and practitioners to submit abstracts for papers and panels for its upcoming conference on the theme of Resistance and Resilience: Resource Extraction, Arms Trade, and Militarism in Africa and the Global South. Working under a broad definition of “militarism” that includes not only the above but also militaristic aspects in news reports, propaganda, literature, film, immigration, gender roles, class distinctions, health, technology, and all other areas of life and culture, this conference aims critically to examine the effects of militarism’s historical, political, economic, and social dimensions in Africa and the Global South on democracy, sovereignty, human security, and other areas important to Africa today and tomorrow.

Additionally, scholars are invited to submit papers on topics not directly focusing on NYASA’s 2025 theme of Resistance and Resilience: Resource Extraction, Arms Trade, and Militarism in Africa and the Global South. For example:
* Archeology of African Civilizations
* Social Sciences in Africa and its Diaspora
* Humanities in Africa and its Diaspora
* Cinema/ Nollywood in Africa and its Diaspora
* Children’s Literature in Africa and its Diaspora
* Representing Africa in Literature, Film, Photos, News
* Women/ Gender/ LGBTQIA+ Studies and issues (lived lives) in Africa and its Diaspora
* African and Heritage Architecture in Africa and its Diaspora
* Medicine / Health in Africa and its Diaspora
* NGOs (e.g., Doctors Without Borders) in Africa
* Mental Health and Trauma in Africa and its Diaspora
* Religions / Spirituality in Africa and its Diaspora
* Information Technologies/ AI and LLM (Large Language Models) in Africa and its Diaspora
* Law Enforcement/ Prison Industrial Complex in Africa and its Diaspora
* Justice in Africa (e.g., South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Reconciliation in Rwanda, Distributive Justice, Reparations, Debt Forgiveness)
* Nations, nationalism, borders, resources (e.g., multi-nation rivers) in Africa
* Genocide Studies in Africa and its Diaspora
* African organizations in Africa and its Diaspora (including regional, pan-African, and global coalition building)
* Symbols and Heritage in Africa and its Diaspora
*Environment / Sustainability / Ecophilosophies / Environmental Organizations in Africa and its Diaspora
* African landscapes
* Origins of Black Studies
* The Intellectual Traditions of Black Studies
* Philosophies and Activism of Black Studies
* The State of Black Studies in K – 12 Education
* Black Studies of the Future—the Remainder of the 21st Century
* Black Studies and Language Challenges

Other topics for papers will be considered—please submit your proposal. Proposals for promoting student participation are especially welcome.

NYASA, founded in 1967 as the SUNY African Studies Faculty Association, is a nonprofit membership association (incorporated as NYASA in 1975) dedicated to advancing the discipline of Africana Studies. NYASA is open to all with an interest in Africa and Africa’s Diaspora. As a regional organization, the New York African Studies Association promotes the visibility and advancement of the discipline in New York (and surrounding) States, offers opportunities for scholarly and professional development of educators, and provides enhanced education for community members, leaders, and activists.

Submission Guidelines:
● Abstracts should be 300 words or less and clearly state the research question, methodology, and expected arguments/findings.
● Please include a brief bio (150 words) with your submission.
● Submit abstracts via the conference website: www.nyasacortland.org

We encourage submissions from scholars across disciplines, including history, political science, literature, language, the arts, anthropology, sociology, economics, and international relations. We also welcome contributions from practitioners working in peacebuilding, conflict resolution, and humanitarian assistance. NYASA also welcomes artists and performers.

The conference will occur at the State University of New York, Cortland, November 6 to 9, 2025 (the conference proper on 7-8 November and Pre-conference events on November 6 and Post-conference events on November 9).

NYASA has a long and ongoing commitment to fostering a diverse and inclusive environment for scholarly exchange and dialogue. We particularly encourage submissions from scholars based in Africa and from underrepresented groups. We look forward to hearing from you!

Contact Information
Prof. Bekeh Ukelina
SUNY - Cortland
Graham Avenue
Cortland, NY 13045
nyasacortland@gmail.com

University of Rochester/United States, 16-17 April 2026 Climate Havens: Humanistic Perspectives on Resilience, Migration, and Resources Symposium

We invite papers and forums/conversations proposals for the symposium Climate Havens: Humanistic Perspectives on Resilience, Migration, Community, and Resources from scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences.

Climate Havens: Humanistic Perspectives on Resilience, Migration, and Resources Symposium

As climate risks intensify, the idea of “climate havens”—and the identification of regions like the Great Lakes as more resilient to environmental change—raises pressing questions about space, belonging, justice, resources, and community. This symposium will explore climate havens through historical, philosophical, artistic, literary, and cultural perspectives, organized around three central themes:

1. What Is a Haven?
This theme invites scholars to explore the idea of a haven as a place of collective refuge and communal resilience in an increasingly unstable world. How have havens been imagined during times of crisis, migration, or disaster throughout history, literature, art, and philosophy? What does it mean for a place to serve as a haven not just for individuals, but for communities seeking belonging, healing, and safety? How do havens inspire new forms of care, kinship, and solidarity?

2. Whose Haven Is It?
This theme examines the ethical and social dimensions of climate havens. Who is able to seek refuge in climate-resilient regions—and who is excluded? How do race, gender, class, and histories of dispossession shape who is welcomed, who is displaced, and who gets to participate in defining community? What happens to existing communities when newcomers arrive? We invite papers that explore how places of refuge are negotiated, contested, and reconstituted in the face of migration, inequality, and climate-driven change.

3. Climate Havens and Natural Resources
This theme focuses on the role of ecosystems and natural resources in shaping climate havens, with special attention to regions like the Great Lakes. How can sustainable management of water, land, and other resources support the development of just and resilient communities? How might Indigenous, local, and historical knowledge guide community-based approaches to ecological care and governance? We invite contributions that address the balance between environmental sustainability, human experience, and resource management in climate-resilient areas.

We are particularly interested in papers focusing on the Great Lakes region and addressing (but not limited to) the following topics and themes:
- Historical perspectives on havens and migration, including climate migration
- Social and political dimensions of water resources
- Indigenous knowledge and stewardship
- Environmental ethics and justice
- Gendered perspectives on havens/climate havens
- Narratives of home, belonging, and displacement
- Urbanization, migration, and planning for climate havens
- Cultural and ecological loss in climate migration
- "Slow disaster" and its relationship to climate migration

The symposium will be held across two days, with day 1 convening at the University of Rochester and day 2 at the Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, NY)

We welcome submissions in the form of traditional papers as well as discussant-led interactive forums or guided conversations that engage with the proposed themes

Submission deadline: August 15 (applicants will be notified by September 30th)

Please submit your questions and papers to humanities@rochester.edu.

Selected papers will be considered for publication in an edited volume with the University of Rochester Press in the “Humanities in the World” Series https://www.sas.rochester.edu/humanities/programs/humanities-in-the-world.html

Presenters whose papers are selected for the symposium will receive small travel stipends, based on need; lodging and meals will be provided.

Contact Information
Tanya Bakhmetyeva, Ph.D.
Associate Director, Humanities Center
Professor of Instruction, Department of History
Professor, Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, University of Rochester
Co-editor, “The Humanities in the World” series, University of Rochester Press

Masaryk Institute and Archives, Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague/Czech Republic, 19-20 November 2025 Migrant Work beyond Categorization: Migrants and Refugees at Work in the 20th-Century East Central Europe

This workshop seeks to extend the scholarly debates on work in various migrant and refugee contexts. It focuses on the 20th-century East Central Europe as both a region of substantial emigration and immigration.

Migrant Work beyond Categorization: Migrants and Refugees at Work in the 20th-Century East Central Europe

The workshop is organized by the project “Migration and Us: Mobility, Refugeedom and Border from the Humanities Perspective (MyGRACE)“, registration number CZ.02.01.01/00/23_025/0008741, supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic within the Jan Amos Komenský Operational Programme (OP JAK), and co-financed by the European Union.

The separation of refugees from other migrants into a distinct legal category manifested in the institutional and administrative practice of refugee protection and its narrative framing. Accomplished by the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and reasserted in the following decades by the growing number of signatories, thus featuring in international and national refugee law, our understanding of who refugees are has endowed them with a set of civil, social, and political rights. However, conditioning refugee protection on the grounds of persecution “for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion,” the contemporary definition of refugees also bears implications for conceptualizing other migrations, including economic migration.

This workshop seeks to extend the scholarly debates on work in various migrant and refugee contexts. It focuses on the 20th-century East Central Europe as both a region of substantial emigration and immigration, yet, until recently, evading the academic spotlight. The workshop strives to explore the various motivations of people on the move, including social and economic reasons, reflecting their more and less voluntary choices. Conceptually, it thus advocates for bringing refugee and migration studies closer together and encourages a more inclusive analysis of migrant and refugee situations. First, it recognizes the impracticability of separating economic reasons for migration from political ones. Second, it highlights the essential role of labor integration and social welfare in refugeedom, both as an initial motive and a solution to the refugee situation.

A thriving concept in economic, legal, and social sciences as well as humanities, labor migration in historical research across periods (partial research notwithstanding) has not yet been appreciated in all its meanings, particularly relating to East Central Europe. Traditionally perceived as economically underdeveloped and subject to political upheaval, the region has rarely been depicted as offering new beginnings and attractive opportunities. Still, East Central Europe has not only produced migrants and refugees, but also provided space for their settlement and integration under various conditions, less or more equal with regard to citizens and other inhabitants.

Considering diverse local, national, and transnational situations, political settings, and migration and refugee regimes, the workshop aims to investigate the meanings and value of work – economic, political, social, and ideological – in the individual and group experiences of migrants and refugees and the receiving societies. Furthermore, it strives to uncover how these were permeated with their formal and informal status, citizenship agendas, existing hierarchies of ethnicity, class, and political persuasion, and personal and collective identities, and, finally, how they were translated into political, social, and civil rights in everyday practice.
We invite papers by historians, social and political scientists, and from other disciplines, discussing their research relating to the 20th-century East Central Europe that is focused on, but not limited to, the following facets of work in the context of migration and refugeedom:

- What role did labor play in the 20th-century experiences of migration and refugeedom in this region?
- How can different sources (archives, literature, press, egodocuments, etc) and various levels of analysis (including the emphasis on personal agency) influence our perception of such labor-related migrant and refugee situations?
- What theoretical and methodological implications does the categorization of migrants and various refugee definitions bring up in historical research?
- Historically, how did such categorization influence the status and rights of migrating groups and individuals?
- Can a more integrative history of labor migration in East Central Europe challenge the Western-oriented perspective?

Paper proposals (max. 250 words) and short bios (200 words), as well as any questions, should be directed to Nikola Tohma (tohma@mua.cas.cz).

Submission deadline: 31 July 2025

The decision on acceptance will be communicated by the end of August. The organizers will offer financial support for travel and accommodation.

Kontakt

tohma@mua.cas.cz

AI and Global Challenges. Harnessing Artificial Intelligence to Meet Global Challenges Organizer: Jaimee Stuart, Ronald Musizvingoza (Emerging Media (Journal)) Host: Emerging Media (Journal) Country: United States Takes place: Digital Date: 01.07.2025 Deadline: 01.07.2025 Website: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/emmed   By Connections Redaktion, Leipzig Research Centre Global Dynamics, Universität Leipzig

This special issue seeks submissions that explore the role of AI in addressing global challenges, examining its potential to drive progress and the complications it introduces in meeting complex or wicked problems. We seek submissions that not only reflect on the insights from the conference but also expand upon them, offering fresh perspectives and analyses, innovative solutions and forward-thinking strategies.

AI and Global Challenges. Harnessing Artificial Intelligence to Meet Global Challenges

Emerging Media is a SAGE open access peer-reviewed scholarly journal. The journal focuses on the exploration of the emerging issues and future development in the field of media and communication, both theoretically and practically. This journal will publish interdisciplinary research articles and leading trend discussions, particularly in conjunction with the field of artificial intelligence (AI), information and communication technologies (ICTs), new media application, computer science, mobile technology, user experience design, data science, aesthetics, ethical and cultural studies, as well as social and psychological perspectives. In addition, this journal is open to a diversity of theoretical paradigms and methodologies. The Journal will include high-quality work from the international community of scholars across the domain of relevant disciplines, free from any specific schools and/or particular paradigms. The Journal will avoid bias relating to age, gender identity, race, religion, and the like. In general, the scope of the journal includes the following three intertwined aspects: (1) media and technology; (2) industry and management; and (3) society and culture.

All accepted articles will be published OnlineFirst rapidly after acceptance and final editing. All articles are published Open Access without any APCs.

Guest Editors:

Jaimee Stuart, United Nations University Institute in Macau (UNU Macau)
Ronald Musizvingoza, United Nations University Institute in Macau (UNU Macau)

Description:

Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) hold the potential to transform development and accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but AI also poses novel risks in meeting global challenges. To explore these issues, the United Nations University Institute in Macau (UNU Macau) convened a conference on April 25th, 2024, on the topic of AI for All: Bridging Divides, Building a Sustainable Future. Following the UNU Macau AI Conference 2024's theme of "AI for All" we seek submissions for a special issue that reflects the conference's comprehensive discussions on creating a sustainable future by utilizing AI to bridge divides across the Global South and Global North as well as the cultural East and West.

This special issue seeks submissions that explore the role of AI in addressing global challenges, examining its potential to drive progress and the complications it introduces in meeting complex or wicked problems. We seek submissions that not only reflect on the insights from the conference but also expand upon them, offering fresh perspectives and analyses, innovative solutions and forward-thinking strategies.

Key Content:

The special issue will cover a range of topics that reflect the conference’s thematic pillars, including but not limited to:

- AI for Sustainable Development: Investigating how AI can be leveraged to address global challenges, promote sustainability, and enhance social equity in alignment with the SDGs.
- AI in Healthcare: Exploring AI’s role in advancing medical research, diagnostics and treatment, while addressing privacy and ethical concerns.
- AI and Education: Assessing AI’s potential to support teaching and learning and its implications on educational systems.
- Ethical AI: Examining ethical considerations concerning the design and deployment of AI including bias, accountability, and transparency.
- AI Governance: Analyzing how AI can enhance public services and policymaking, alongside potential risks such as surveillance and decision-making autonomy.
- AI Technologies and Innovations: Highlighting the latest advancements and real-world applications of AI in various fields, including IoT, legal systems, and complex systems modeling.
- AI and Gender Equality: Critically examining AI systems and their link to gender equality.

Submission Process:

Submissions should be original, unpublished, and not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Interested authors should submit their full papers directly to the journal submission website below and select the special issue "AI and Global Challenged". Full papers will be published online-first on a rolling basis soon after acceptance. The journal offers full Open Access for submissions selected to the special issue without any Article Processing Charges (APCs).

Submission website: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/emmed

Submission deadline: 1 July 2025

Articles:

The special issue welcomes:

- Original research articles up to 10,000 words (including abstract, acknowledgments, references, tables, figures, and conflict of interest statement).
- Both empirical and conceptual papers are welcomed. All original research papers will undergo a rigorous, double-blind peer-review process, ensuring the highest standards of academic excellence.
- Colloquium papers between 3000 to 5000 words that offer opinion or op-ed style contributions in an organized discussion with academic or practical insights. Colloquium articles will be reviewed by the editorial team.
- Book reviews up to 3000 words that provide a brief evaluation of a published book on emerging media and communication associated with AI, providing our readers with an engaging discussion of the work. Book reviews will be reviewed by the editorial team.

Publication on Emerging Media is free of charge, no article processing fees.

Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina/United States, 29-31 May 2026

All Men Are Created Equal: Freedom, Slavery, and Race in the American Revolution

The Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) invites proposals for papers to be presented at its Seventeenth Annual Conference on the American Revolution. 

The conference will examine the experiences of African American people and the ideologies of freedom, slavery, and race in the War for American Independence and the founding of the United States. The SAR, as part of its Congressional mandate to encourage historical research, is sponsoring this conference in alliance with Wake Forest University.

In his 1776 essay Liberty Further Extended, Lemuel Haynes denied that “Liberty is so contracted a principle as to be Confin’d to any nation under Heaven; nay, I think it not hyperbolical to affirm, that Even an African, has Equally as good a right to his Liberty in common with Englishmen.” This Black patriot and soldier connected freedom, citizenship, and nation. How actors in the American Revolution experienced, articulated, or contested these ideas is the question that drives this conference.

The conference intends to examine perspectives from Black and White men and women aligned with the Patriots or Loyalists. We also invite comparisons between the young United States and the broader revolutionary Atlantic World.

The SAR invites proposals based on new research from graduate students, established scholars, and public history practitioners. 

Proposals should include a 250-word abstract introducing the author’s research and how their topic advances our field. Please include a short (two-page) vita. 

Submit proposals by October 1, 2025 to John Ruddiman, Department of History, Wake Forest University at Ruddimja@wfu.edu with the subject line “2026 SAR Conference.” Acceptances will be sent by early December 2025.

The SAR anticipates publication of the accepted, revised papers in an edited volume. To facilitate that, participants will submit their papers (approximately 5,000-6,000 words) for pre-circulation by May 1, 2026.

The SAR will offer a $500 honorarium and cover presenters’ travel and lodging expenses.

The 2026 SAR Annual Conference will honor Annette Gordon-Reed, Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. The SAR recognizes her distinguished scholarship and public service in history, especially to the histories of race, slavery, and the pursuit of dignity and liberty in the Revolutionary generation.

Contact Information

John Ruddiman
Wake Forest University

Konstanz/Germany

Global intellectual history is an emerging subfield within Global History, distinguished by its focus on intellectual developments beyond traditional Western narratives. Historically, intellectual history has primarily centred on canonical European thinkers, leaving a significant gap in the inclusion of non-Western perspectives, particularly from Africa. The workshop seeks to fill this gap by compiling a reader of original documents by African intellectuals and personalities from the 18th to the 20th centuries, to be selected and commented by a team of historians from Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

African Voices in Global Intellectual History

Global intellectual history is an emerging subfield within Global History, distinguished by its focus on intellectual developments beyond traditional Western narratives. Historically, intellectual history has primarily centred on canonical European thinkers, leaving a significant gap in the inclusion of non-Western perspectives, particularly from Africa. Recent scholarship has begun to address this by examining intellectual traditions across diverse global contexts. However, African voices, especially those beyond typical themes like nationalism and anti-colonialism, remain underrepresented.

The workshop seeks to address this gap by compiling a reader of original documents from African intellectuals and personalities from the 18th to the 20th centuries, to be selected and commented by historians from Europe, Africa, and the United States. The anthology will include a wide range of African perspectives, including voices from Sub-Saharan Africa and the African diaspora, to broaden the dialogue within global intellectual history. The selection will focus on expanding the traditional intellectual canon to include less commonly recognized figures, reinterpreting well-known African intellectuals through the lens of classical intellectual history themes, and increasing the representation of female voices. Additionally, the reader will also feature documents in African languages, ensuring a linguistically diverse representation.

Thematically, the anthology will address four key aspects: dealing with Europe, development, difference, and (un)freedom. These themes will explore African intellectuals’ engagement with imaginations of Europe as well as European experiences, concepts of development and civilization, and various forms of social and cultural differences, while also reflecting on discourses of freedom and the lack of it in Africa. By focusing on these themes, the project aims to challenge dated dichotomies in African history and contribute to the ongoing effort to integrate African perspectives into global intellectual history. Through this work, the anthology seeks to offer a richer, more nuanced understanding of Africa’s intellectual contributions and to encourage further research in this underexplored area.

Programm

Monday, 23 June

2 pm Welcome and Introduction
Mary Owusu and Martin Rempe

2.30 pm (Un)Freedom, Community, and Civilization

José Ligna Nafafé, Black Atlantic Abolitionist Movement in the Seventeenth Century
Paola Vargas Arana, Africa is the Guts of my Body: Maroon Epistemologies in African Intellectual History
Martin Rempe, On Civilization: Edward W. Blyden’s African Life and Customs

Coffee break

04.30 pm Feminism

Joana Serrado, Ain’t I a Woman/Philosopher Too? The Transatlantic Enlightenment of Rosa Maria “Egipciaca” (c. 1719–1771)
Mary Afolabi, Buchi Emecheta, A Nigerian Feminist Voice in Global Intellectual History
Zinhle Ka’Nobuhlaluse, Mamphela Ramphele’s Transgressive Thought: Challenging Power, Reimagining Futures

Dinner

Tuesday, 24 June

9.30 am Discussion of the Book Proposal
Daniel Speich, Introductory Comment

10.30 am African-European Encounters

Stephen Volz, Diagnosing an Unpredictable World: Tswana-British Dialogue on God and Nature During the Nineteenth Century
Arno Sonderegger: “Race”, “African Nationality” and “Self-Government” according to Africanus Horton
Ibrahima Sene, De-Centering Moscow: Black Intellectual Agency and Afro-Diasporic Political Thought in the Interwar Era
Marcia Schenck, Resonating Memories: The Life Writing of Regina Vera Cruz and the Legacy of African Labor Migration

Lunch

2.30 pm Rethinking African Revolutionary Thought

Lili Pontinta, Amilcar Cabral’s ‘Speech on March 8th’: A Gender Perspective
Trishula Patel, Suman Mehta, Afro-Asian Solidarity and the Struggle for Independence in Southern Rhodesia
Paulina Aroch-Fugellie, Rethinking Julius Nyerere

Coffee break

4.30 pm Construction and Development

Łukasz Stanek, Developmental Research in Post-Independence Ghana: The Housing Question
Mary Owusu, “Should Dams be Built?” Letitia Obeng and the Evolution of Sustainable Development Thought
Gerardo Serra, Kwame Nkrumah’s Architectural Temporalities

Dinner

Wednesday, 25 June

9.30 am Culture and History in the Age of Decolonization

Christoph Kalter, Joseph Ki-Zerbo’s Thoughts on Language, Education, Economic Development, and Cultural Decolonization
Christina Brauner, The "Middle Ages" in Africa: Concepts and Comparison in African Historiography, 1950ff
Fiachna McCarren, Rajat Neogy: A Life in Transition

11.15 am Concluding Discussion

We are particularly interested in proposals that move beyond the framework of a single national tradition and engage in a dialogue between European and Asian sources, though we also welcome case studies focusing on the work of individual authors. We welcome analyses of a wide range of sources, including traditional travel accounts, diaries, memoirs, and personal letters, but with an emphasis on real interactions experienced by the authors. Contributors are encouraged to consider the material dimensions of individual encounters as described in their sources and to reflect on the broader aesthetic and ideological meanings these scenes convey.

Call for Chapters Edited Volume - Encounters in Unexpected Places: Chinese and East-Central European Interactions in Peripheral Spaces, 1700-1949

The proposed volume aims to investigate diverse accounts of encounters between Chinese and East-Central Europeans, focusing on interactions outside the major centres typically associated with intercivilizational exchange.

The volume is based on three premises:

First, scholars of travel writing emphasize that ‘encounters are as essential to travel as place; they shape and define journeys’ (Mee 2014, 3). Even when travellers themselves write generally about “others”, still their knowledge owed a lot to individual encounters. Yet, despite their importance, depictions of individual interpersonal encounters have not been central to studies of travel writing. Therefore, we invite contributions that examine how Chinese and East-Central Europeans described these cross-cultural interactions and the role such representations played in shaping identity discourses.

Second, while there is a substantial body of scholarship on Western European encounters with the non-European world over the past few centuries – a period when European imperialism was the dominant force in world history – recent years have seen growing interest in studying intercivilizational contacts from a different perspective, namely, by focusing on actors from regions commonly regarded as peripheral. Therefore, we aim to take a closer look at encounters between Chinese and East-Central Europeans. Recent publications have explored this field and may serve as inspiration (Křížová and Malečková 2022; Huigen and Kołodziejczyk 2023; Kałczewiak and Kozłowska 2022; Mrázek 2024), though there is still much to explore.

Third, to investigate the topic of peripherality more deeply, we seek to focus on encounters taking place outside well-known cosmopolitan centres like Paris, Shanghai, Hong Kong, or New York – places traditionally seen as melting pots – and instead shift our attention to small towns, remote villages, country roads, and other locations less commonly associated with multicultural exchange.

We are particularly interested in proposals that move beyond the framework of a single national tradition and engage in a dialogue between European and Asian sources, though we also welcome case studies focusing on the work of individual authors. We welcome analyses of a wide range of sources, including traditional travel accounts, diaries, memoirs, and personal letters, but with an emphasis on real interactions experienced by the authors. Contributors are encouraged to consider the material dimensions of individual encounters as described in their sources and to reflect on the broader aesthetic and ideological meanings these scenes convey. The following questions may serve as a guiding framework: How did authors’ backgrounds influence their encounters and the meanings they ascribed to them? How did the context of the interaction shape the encounter? How did authors navigate cultural differences in diverse realities? How did descriptions of the people they met contribute to the construction of their own identities? What rhetorical devices were used to describe cross-cultural interactions? How often did they achieve genuine understanding, and how?

Practical information

The volume is planned for Anthem Studies in Encounters between Peripheral Region series. Please submit a short abstract (about 300-400 words) with a short biographical note in English by 31 August 2025 to the editorial team at tewert@shisu.edu.cn and tewert@amu.edu.pl. The editors of the publication will reply with any comments on the proposed topics and guidelines for the preparation of articles within two months. The planned deadline for full article submissions is April 2026.

Quoted literature

Huigen, Siegfried, and Dorota Kołodziejczyk. 2023. East Central Europe Between the Colonial and the Postcolonial in the Twentieth Century. Edited by Siegfried Huigen and Dorota Kołodziejczyk. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kałczewiak, Mariusz, and Magdalena Kozłowska, eds. 2022. The World beyond the West. Perspectives from Eastern Europe. New York: Berghahn.

Křížová, Markéta, and Jitka Malečková, eds. 2022. Central Europe and the Non-European World in the Long 19th Century. Berlin: Frank & Timme.

Mee, Catherine. 2014. Interpersonal Encounters in Contemporary Travel Writing: French and Italian Perspectives. London: Anthem Press.

Mrázek, Jan, ed. 2024. Escaping Kakania: Eastern European Travels in Colonial Southeast Asia. Vienna: Central European University Press.

Journal Ennen ja nyt seeks papers in three categories: Research Papers, Reflections and Essays, and Reviews for upcoming thematic issue about challenges in historical research between the Nordics and Southern African states, which is to be published in Autumn 2026. The guest editor of the issue is Jerkko Holmi (javhol@utu.fi).

Several recent approaches on researching themes like decolonial turn (Maldonado-Torres & Cavooris 2017), anticolonialism, and reconciliation of the relations between Global North and Global South have raised the discussion on methods, approaches and challenges of historical research. Scholars interested in themes like Nordic entanglements in colonial encounters often face the recurring problem – written and pictorial primary research materials are mainly available from the source of Global North based actors.

Current historical knowledge fortifies the colonial mindset and impacts on knowledge constructions on and about Africa. In the recent years the debate over colonial knowledge that Europeans utilised, pinpointed the ignored role of the colonized as passive informants and activities of European production of the knowledge. Indigenous people likewise contributed to the process, and the colonial knowledge was a result of collaboration between the two sides, an epistemic confrontation between two knowledge systems. This approach increasingly defines the broader history of colonialism and contributes to understanding of Global North action. (Wagoner 2003, Leibowitz 2017) The concept of decolonial praxis (Lordan & Dei 2016) has been introduced into the historical research to describe and provide tools for more unbiased approaches where (formerly) oppressed groups of people have been prioritised. It is also about giving a voice to those silenced by the colonial system, showcasing their interpretations of the past and parallel realities. Alternatives for classical historical research are often sought from new perspectives for preceding research questions, pursuing to provide alternative outlook and new primary sources for the same subjects and allow interpretation of this recent historical reality constituting dimensions of this thematic issue.

Decoloniality can also be seen to bear different meaning in different situations. Decolonisation can for example be interpreted as 1) theory used as a tool to engage into critical arguments (Govender & Naidoo 2023) as 2) movement or mission moving away from colonial infrastructures (Tuck & Yang 2012; Sultana 2019) and as 3) process of healing colonial wounds (Mignolo & Walsh 2018).

This thematic issue welcomes papers on empirical or conceptual research approaches that examine the intersection of decolonial research tradition and challenges the researchers pursue to overcome, to divert from the Global North dominantly orientated approach on the research subject in the modern era (from late 19th Century to late 20th Century). Papers may consider, for example, but are not limited to, different conceptions of decolonial historical research, questions of power and dominance, or ethics of research within the theme. This issue invites scholars also to reflect on methodological and critical perspectives that can challenge and advance our ways of thinking, encouraging the transcendence of disciplinary boundaries.

Papers will be selected based on proposals, i.e. short abstracts (maximum 250 words). Please send your proposal to the guest editor of the issue by September 30th 2025. Remember to specify the category (research paper, reflection/essay, or review) of your proposal and it can be written in either Finnish or English. Decisions will be announced by October 12th 2025. Full manuscripts should be submitted to the Guest Editor for comments by 28 February 2026. Only research papers are peer-revied and should be at maximum 55 000 characters including spaces and citations. For more information on the journal's writing guidelines and publication policies, see https://journal.fi/ennenjanyt/about/submissions.

Inquiries and abstracts for the call for papers can be sent to Jerkko Holmi (javhol@utu.fi), who will be the guest editor of the issue. Olli Kleemola (owklee@utu.fi) is the editor-in-chief of the journal.

Ennen ja nyt: Historian tietosanomat is a non-profit historical journal founded in 2001 that publishes peer-reviewed scholarly articles, reflections, essays, and book reviews. It is published in Finnish and English and, by agreement, in other languages. For more information about the journal, please visit https://journal.fi/ennenjanyt/index. Ennen ja nyt is a fully open access publication, the content of which is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (CC BY 4.0). Ennen ja nyt is at level 1 in Finnish Publication Forum, which classifies publication channels to support the quality assessment of academic research in Finland (more: https://julkaisufoorumi.fi/en)

Any expenses on the language checking or other expenses of the manuscripts are responsible of their authors.

We are pleased to announce that the 8th issue of the journal USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics, “The Role of Public History Within and Outside the United States: Critical Reflections”, can be downloaded for free at the following address: https://usabroad.unibo.it/issue/view/1372

This issue of USAbroad – edited by Federico Chiaricati, Lorenzo Costaguta, Marta Gara, Chiara Migliori, Serena Mocci, Emanuele Nide and Matteo Rossi – investigates the “state of the art” of Public History as a discipline within and outside the United States, paying particular attention to how Public History about the United States was conducted by scholars outside the country. The response to the call took us in unexpected directions, which allowed us to broaden our geographical focus to the Western hemisphere and to suggest reflections on what Public History is and how it has been interpreted across time.

We hope you will enjoy the issue and we look forward to receiving your comments and feedback.

Best regards,

The USAbroad Editorial Team

 

Contents of the 8th Issue:

Introduction

The Role of Public History Within and Outside the United States: Critical Reflections

Essays

Daniel Scroop, William E. Leuchtenburg: The Professional as Public Historian

Darius Wainwright, Showcasing U.S. History in Iran and American Public Diplomacy’s Limitations, 1950–1965

Andreas Etges, “Honorable men”: Robert E. Lee, Erwin Rommel, and the Memory and Forgetting of Defeat and Guilt

María Elena Bedoya Hidalgo, Jimena Perry, Sebastián Vargas Álvarez, What Makes Latin American Public Histories Different? Dialogues, Debates, Perspectives

Deivison Amaral, Labor as Public and Digital History in Brazil

Bringing the History Back In

Alessandra Lorini, My Life as Historian of Public Memories: Performative Power of Pageants, Exhibits, and Monuments in the Public Space

 

by Matt Myers

Oxford University Press, 2025

• Offers a bold and exciting reinterpretation of contemporary European history and the history of the left
• A detailed archive-driven work involving 27 separate archives and multiple languages and oral history interviews
• Surveys an extremely large range of primary and secondary literature from seven countries
• "All students of contemporary socialism and the Left will have to reckon with Matt Myers's vigorously written and painstakingly researched argument that Socialist and Communist party strategies, and not the end of the historic working class, ushered in the age of neoliberalism. A book that should reorient a long debate." - Charles S. Maier, Leverett Saltonstall Professor Emeritus of History, Harvard University

"An important contribution to understanding the historical halt of the European labour movement around 1980, through political class analyses of three decisive strikes in Britain, France, and Italy." - Göran Therborn, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Cambridge

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-halted-march-of-the-european-left-9780198944614

The EHLN working group, Arctic and Indigenous Labour, aims to bring together scholars interested in the historiography of Indigenous labour in settler colonies, both within and outside Europe.

Many labour historians associate Indigenous history with non-European history. However, to date, only Norway and Denmark are among the 23 countries that have ratified the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention No. 169 of the International Labour Organisation. While appearing as models for labour relations worldwide, scholars have paid little attention to the working and living conditions of Indigenous people in the Nordic countries. Although the process of industrialisation in the Nordic countries is rooted in settler colonialism, this aspect has not been a significant part of labour history.

There are good reasons for labour historians to consider the synergies that emerge from combining labour history and Indigenous history, as our colleagues from other parts of the world have demonstrated.

• The synergies are first conversations about dispossessive commons and capitalism.
• Secondly, perspectives in labour history that go beyond wage labour and address the topics of feminist labour history, unpaid labour, as well as race and racialisation in settler colonialism and forced labour.
• Thirdly, it refreshes old and new insights about work culture, customs, rituals, kin and community and culture as it is lived out in changing capitalism.
• And fourthly, it emphasises the interaction between Indigenous histories and the strong political protests among Indigenous people.

The Working Group offers a meeting space for labour and Indigenous historians to exchange ideas about theoretical frameworks, specific methods, and areas of blind spot in labour history.

With this call for papers, we invite you to submit proposals for papers, panels, or workshop ideas by September 1, 2025, to silke.neunsinger[at]arbark.se

We also encourage the inclusion of Indigenous scholars and activists in the planning and implementation of your activities at the ELHN.

The proposal should include a title, a short abstract (maximum of 300 words) for each paper, biographies of the participants, their affiliations, and contact details. If you wish to submit a panel, please send an abstract for the entire panel, as well as for each presentation included. For any other format, we require abstracts, names, affiliations, and contact details of participants. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions. We are looking forward to your submissions!

Silke Neunsinger, Inger Jonsson & Åsa Össbo

This is a call for abstracts for the Military Labour History Working Group (MLHWG) panels at the 6th conference of the European Labour History Network (ELHN), to be held at the University of Barcelona, Spain, 16-19 June 2026. See the following link for further information on the conference: https://socialhistoryportal.org/elhn/conference-2026. A full website for the conference will be available soon. To find out more about the MLHWG, visit our webpage.

Registration to the ELHN Conference is expected to open in February 2026. More details will follow. Costs of registration, travel and subsistence are at the expense of the participants. There will be a reduced registration fee for students and scholars without institutional affiliation. If you have an urgent request, please contact the ELHN at elhn@iisg.nl.

Before submitting an abstract for the MLHWG panels, please note the following:

1. This is an in-person conference only. Please ensure you can travel to Barcelona for the conference.
2. We cannot offer funding support. Please ensure you have access to other funding sources to support your attendance.
3. We have a limited number of positions available on the panels. There are a large number of Working Group panels to be accommodated at the conference.
4. The MLHWG coordinators reserve the right to make adjustments to the panels, including themes, in response to the number and type of received submissions.

At the ELHN 2026 Conference, the MLHWG will run a series of panel sessions related to both planned projects on military labour history and several themes nominated by the coordinators and WG members. We plan the following five panel sessions with paper presentations:

1. Military Labour in the Early Modern Era

The military profession underwent drastic changes during the early modern era. Armies grew dramatically, war became increasingly commercialised, and a transnational military labour force emerged. Despite the pivotal nature of this period, much of the focus of historical studies of military labour have focused on developments after the French revolution, rather than the preceding centuries. Related to an ongoing WG project, this panel seeks to build upon the discussions at the ELHN Uppsala conference 2024, bring focus to this relatively neglected period, and investigate continuity and change in military labour during the early modern period. Topics to be discussed may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Socio-cultural changes in the military profession: from warriors to salaried soldiers.
• Aspects and concepts in the professionalisation of warfare.
• Emergence and functioning of the international military labour market.
• Employer-labour relations and proletarisation of the work force.

2. Indigenous Military Labour (joint panel with Arctic and Indigenous Labour WG)

First Nations people have been faced with the military invasion of their lands and have contributed towards the military labour of those settler nations. In response to the former, they adapted their own military strategies to face a new type of enemy. In relation to the latter, Indigenous men and women have contributed to imperial wars, world wars, and cold wars and more. Despite doing so, they have continued to face discrimination within settler nations’ forces and in wider society. This panel proposes to examine Indigenous contributions to military labour and the ways military labour can intersect with rights activism, including but not limited to the following:

• Indigenous concepts of military labour.
• Recruitment, including prevention of acceptance into forces.
• Conscription and exclusion, including the right to self-determination.
• Roles and skills, including bringing Indigenous knowledges to military labour.
• Personal experiences, including gendered experiences of military labour.
• Protest, including rights activism during and after service.

3. Organising Soldiers: Unionisation, Collective Bargaining, and Activism

This session explores the ways in which soldiers have collectively organised to influence their working conditions, reform the military from within, and drive broader social change. A key focus will be on situating soldiers’ collective action within the broader framework of labour history. The session will explore how military service intersects with labour rights, industrial action, and workplace organising, highlighting the position of soldiers as both military workers and state agents. Through this lens, we seek to deepen our understanding of how soldiers have navigated the tensions between discipline, duty, and labour activism to shape their conditions of service and contribute to wider struggles for workers’ rights and social justice.

Against this backdrop, we welcome papers examining diverse form of soldier organising and activism, including but not limited to unionisation efforts, collective bargaining initiatives, soldiers’ councils, mutinies, strikes, informal resistance networks, and transnational dimensions of military labour. We also encourage papers that explore the intersections of gender, race, and class in shaping soldier activism, as well as the relationships between conscript associations and the broader labour movement.

4. Social Constructions and Divisions of Military Labour

Military labour is highly organised by markers such as class, gender, service, age, and rank. In turn, this can affect social status and prestige in civil society. This panel aims to look at the different ways that military labour is socially constructed and mediated, especially in terms of social prestige. This may include, but is not limited to, the following:

• The status of conscripts and reservists vis-à-vis regular military forces.
• Relationships and differences between army, navy and air force.
• The status of civilian workers in the military.
• Gender, identity and military labour.
• Race, ethnicity and military labour.

5. Labour, Coercion and the Military (this is joint panel with Labour and Coercion WG and has a different submission deadline of 7 July 2025)

In recent years, the military has been firmly established as a site of labour, and military labour history thus claimed its place within labour history. However, even though work related to war and the military is widely known to have included a significant amount of coercion, the interplay between work, coercion and punishment when it comes to the military and its actors has limited systematic research. This panel therefore aims to bring together research highlighting the connection between these dynamics – that is, how coercion was practiced, experienced and resisted when it came to the military throughout history. We employ a broad definition of military labour, including military service itself, but also – among others – work in infrastructure, transport workers, care and medical labour, women’s work in the military, convict labour. At the same time, we want to highlight that coercion is not a characteristic only of specific forms of labour relations, but a dynamic inscribed into multiple social relations. We especially want to highlight the following aspects of the complex relationship between labour, coercion and the military:

• Entering the military: Coercion in processes of military recruitment (e.g. forced recruitment, the recruitment of marginalised groups such as beggars and vagrants, but also systems of slavery, and the dynamics of coercion underlying the “voluntary” recruitment).
• Being punished through the military: the entanglement of the military and systems of punishment, focusing on the legitimacy of power and the control of bodies deemed reformable by punitive justice enforced through the military institutions (e.g. galley service, penal battalions, war captivity, or other punishment forms).
• Leaving the military: soldiers’ agency and ways of leaving the military (e.g. desertion, escapes, strategies to get discharged, invalidity).
• Surviving after the military: practices of work, coercion and (im)mobilisation of former soldiers and their families (e.g. entanglements of military labour, poor relief and the criminalisation of begging or vagrancy).

Papers from any geographical area welcome.

Submit your 300-word abstract to the MLHWG coordinators via militarylabourhistory@gmail.com by 7 July for the Labour, Coercion and the Military panel only and 1 September 2025 for the other panels. We will advise you of the outcome by the end of October 2025.

Please send the following information to the WG coordinators:

1. Your name and any institutional affiliation, where relevant.
2. The name of the panel for which you are nominating your paper. (If your paper is relevant to more than one panel theme, you may nominate these in order of preference.)
3. The title of your presentation.
4. An abstract of 300 words.
5. A short bio of up to 200 words and, optionally, a web bio or ORCID link.
6. Confirmation that you understand this is an in-person conference only.

Regards,

Olli Siitonen, Jeongmin Kim, Alexandros Touloumtzidis and Christine de Matos

International Workshop
Navigating Worlds of Coerced Labour: Procurement, mobility, exploitation and resistance of Enslaved, Indentured and Contracted workers in the Atlantic, and the Asia-Pacific region

Venue: International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Dates: 16-17 October 2025
Organisers: Britt van Duijvenvoorden, Karin Hofmeester, Pascal Konings, Filipa Ribeiro da Silva, Matthias van Rossum

Call for Papers

Coerced labour in its various forms is a persisting problem in today’s global economy, being found both in the North and the Global South, often labelled as Modern Forms of Slavery. The historical roots of these modern forms of coerced labour relations can be traced back to the development of capitalism and the emergence of a first global economy roughly 500 years ago. The rise of the first supply-chains of global commodities led to an increase in the procurement of labourers, the development of aggressive forms of “recruitment”, the emergence of new patterns of displacement, and the introduction and adaptation of various coercive forms of labour extraction, from slavery to systems of indentured work to coercive contracted migrant labour.

Their existence and persistence have led to the development of significant durable inequalities among workers brought into those global supply-chains and caught into their systems of labour exploitation. While simultaneously they also led to the rise of forms of resistance among those exploited. Over time the demands of the global colonial economy forced those leading the European empire building processes and capitalist development to simultaneously and/or alternately tap into different streams and reservoirs of labour. In some chronologies and spaces these transformations led to the coexistence of various streams of coerced labour relations, forms of recruitment and procurement, displacement and labour exploitation, while in other chronologies and regions colonial and capitalist transformations triggered shifts in the use of different forms of coerced labour relations.

These different forms of coerced labour relations have received a lot of attention from scholars over the past decades. It is unquestionable that there is a significant number of studies on European indentured labour to North America, and on Asia indentured labour to the Americas as well as elsewhere with Enslaved labour and commerce in enslaved Africans particular in the Atlantic receiving the lion share of academic attention.

These bodies of literature tend, however, to be self-contained, with limited dialogue across the various streams of scholarship. These different lines of research and scholarly work also appear to have been influenced by distinct debates and trends in academia and the society at large. While scholarship on slave trade and slavery has been deeply transformed over the past decades under the guise of the Global and the Digital Turns, and the demands and expectations of communities of descendent of enslaved Africans, the study of systems of indentured labour relations and of coerced contracted migrant workers only more recently started developing in similar directions.

The core aim of this International Workshop Navigating Worlds of Coerced Labour is therefore three-fold:

• Foster collaboration between scholars conducting research on different forms of coerced labour relations
• Stimulate dialogue between the different bodies of literature on enslaved labour, systems of indentured and coerced contract labour, and migrant labour
• Promote the development of a shared research agenda that will allow scholars examining forms of coerced labour relations that will allow to identify major similarities and differences, as well as shifts and continuities overtime.

With these three aims in mind, we would like to invite participants in this International Workshop to explore a set of four core themes: i) Procurement and Recruitment; 2) Mobilities; 3) Exploitation, and Resistance.

We are especially interested in addressing a number of core questions that can be posed to across different lines of research on labour coercion.

Coercion, Procurement, Recruitmentand Resistance

Procurement and Recruitmentwas the key moment when workers entered a supply-chain of coerced labour, being it under the condition of enslaved, indentured or forcefully contracted. To compare processes of procurement, the experience of procurers of coerced labour as well as the experience of coerced workers, it is in our view paramount to reflect on the following questions:

1. Did different types of coerced workers ended up being recruited in the same or neighboring regions?
2. Was there an overlap of regions of procurement and recruitment overtime and in situations of transition between different types of coerced labour procurement and recruitment?
3. Who was involved in the process of procurement and recruitment? (Europeans, settlers, local authorities, etc).)? How and Why?
4. What were the factors that influenced procurement and recruitment from both the view point of workers as well as of those gathering the workers? (demand, price, nature disasters, armed conflicts, etc.)
5. How did coerced workers resist procurement and recruitment?
6. Were there major differences/similarities in the forms of resistance against procurement and recruitment, and the strategies employed by enslaved people, indentured workers (both Asia and Europeans), or contracted migrant workers?

Coercive mobilities and Resistance

More often than not, procurement was followed by Coerced displacement or mobility, because labour was in demand in other regions where global commodities were being produced and/or processed, and colonial infra-structures were being developed. To better identify and explain patterns of displacement and mobility and to reconstruct the organization of coerced labour transportation, we would like to invite participants in this workshop to reflect on some of these
questions:

1. Can we identify patterns of displacement and mobility among coerced workers, that show major similarities and/or differences between mobility of enslaved peoples, indentured workers and contracted labourers between different regions in the Atlantic and the Asian-Pacific region?
2. What factors helped shaping the main patterns of displacement and mobility of coerced workers?
3. How was displacement, commercialization and transportation organized? Can we identify major similarities and/or differences in the logics of the different streams of coercive mobilities?
4. Who was involved in the displacement, “commercialization”, and transportation of coerced workers? (Europeans, settlers, local authorities, etc.)? How and Why?
5. How did coerced workers resist displacement and mobility?
6. Were there major differences/similarities in the forms of resistance and the strategies employed by enslaved peoples, indentured workers (of both Asian and European background), or contracted migrant workers?

Exploitation and Resistance

After being coercively displaced enslaved peoples, indentured workers, and contracted migrant labourers were often subjected to oppressive regimes of labour exploitation. To better identify, analyse and compare these regimes of labour exploitation imposed on different types of coerced workers we would like to invite participants in this workshop to reflect on some of the following questions:

1. Were there significant differences between the Atlantic and Asia, and across the vast Asia-Pacific region when it comes to regimes of labour exploitation of coerced workers?
2. Did regimes of labour exploitation vary among different types of coerced workers, across time and space?
3. What kind of strategies were developed and employed by “organisers” and overseers to rationalize and maximize exploitation of coerced workers?
4. Were there significant differences or similarities in the strategies deployed to exploit enslaved peopled, indentured workers and contracted migrant workers?
5. How did coerced workers resist labour extraction and exploitation?
6. Were there major difference and/or similarities in the forms of resistance and the strategies employed by enslaved peoples, indentured workers (both Asians and Europeans), or contracted migrant workers?

We would like to invite colleagues interested in joining this event to send us an extended abstract (c. 1000-2500 words) of their papers by 30th June 2025. Speakers will be expected to submit a full-length paper two weeks prior the event for pre-circulation among the participants with the intend of fostering discussion during the Workshop. Any queries about the submission of the extended summaries and the organization of the event can be directed to Britt van Duijvenvoorde (britt.van.duijvenvoorde@iisg.nl), Pascal Konings (pascal.konings@iisg.nl), and Filipa Ribeiro da Silva (filipa.ribeirodasilva@iisg.nl).

Guild and Artisan Labour Working Group at the VI Congress ELHN

The Guild and Artisan Labour Working Group of the European Labour History Network (ELHN) brings together scholars engaged in a classic topic of economic and social history: craft guilds and artisan labour. We aim to expand upon and deepen the long-standing debates on the socio-economic dynamics that linked these institutions to labour and society from a historical perspective, especially spanning the 14th to the 19th centuries, in Europe and abroad.

Although excellent studies on the subject have not been lacking in recent decades, the main focus—rightly—has shifted toward invisible labour, prompting a reassessment of sources traditionally deemed secondary to guild records, as their predominant use in twentieth-century historiography gave rise to interpretative models that are now increasingly contested—for example, the notion of a stagnant pre-modern economy or the exclusion of women from labour.

We believe that this rich and fruitful season of research must now reconnect with the study of guilds—institutions that, especially in urban Europe, regulated professional training, ensured production quality standards, and controlled access to the market. These institutions exercised normative and identity-shaping power that extended far beyond mere economic regulation, profoundly shaping the social and cultural structures of their communities. However, even if the primary geographical focus of the Working Group is Eurasia, the scope of research also extends to the former colonies and beyond, promoting a global perspective through comparative analysis with other “guild-like institutions” worldwide.

The purpose of this Working Group is to enhance our understanding of this phenomenon and to lay the groundwork for a reconsideration of labour history studies, free from superficial generalizations. What we propose is to focus on these institutions—drawing on the extensive existing literature and brand-new archival research—to study them in their own right and in their fullness, on their own terms, rather than merely as a "phase" or "configuration" within a broader category of labour. 

The Guild and Artisan Labour Working Group invites all interested scholars - at any stage of their academic career (and especially PhD students) - to submit a 250-word abstract for a communication to be presented at the VI Congress of the European Labour History Network to be held in-person at the Universitat de Barcelona between 16-19 June 2026.  The Guild and Artisan Labour Working Group welcomes contributions that engage with, but are not restricted to, the following themes:

1. Guilds, Apprenticeship, and the Labor Market:
   • Ways of learning: apprenticeship, journeymanship, and tramping systems
   • Closed shops, open markets, and “free” trades: limitations and opportunities for apprentices, women, and child labor
   • Labor markets beyond the guilds
2. Change, Conflict, and Institutions:
   • Intra-guild conflicts and liberal competition
   • The role of institutions in the decline of the guilds
   • Journeymen’s organizations in the Ancien Régime: guilds, combinations, or craft unions?
   • Exclusion or integration? Women, foreigners, and minorities in the guild world
3. The End of the Guilds: Between Abolition and Continuity
   • Guild abolition: abrupt ruptures, gradual breaks
   • Resistance, reactions, and readjustments during abolition
   • Guild continuities in labor markets and social movements

We strongly encourage everyone interested to submit a proposal, even if the topic lies outside the three above general topics. We also welcome studies concerning any place or time, so long as it deals with guild and artisan labour.  In order to encourage the widest participation, we will do our best to provide translation and/or session interpretation services for English, Castilian (Spanish), Catalan, Italian, or other languages as needed.  Do let us know if you might be interested in receiving or providing language services.

The deadline for abstract submissions is 1 September 2025. Please send your 250-word abstract to: guild.artisan.labour@gmail.com  specifying which of the proposed sessions would be most appropriate for your paper.  You are also welcome to indicate if your proposal might open up additional lines of inquiry or suggest new thematic directions for discussion.  Kindly include your current affiliation (if any) when submitting your abstract, and indicate if you are a PhD student.  Keep in mind that PhD students and unaffiliated scholars are eligible for a reduced conference fee when registering. 

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, or if you wish to participate in the wider, ongoing activities of the Working Group, please feel free to reach out via email.  Please let us know if you are interested in participating in the Working Group Meeting via video call to be held at the ELHN Conference.  We look forward to hearing from you! Please feel free to circulate this Call for Papers among colleagues who may find it relevant.

The Labour Migration History Working Group of the European Labour History Network (ELHN) invites submissions for its sessions on the theme of “Disparities and Inequalities in Transformations of Labour Migration: Historical Shifts and Historiographical Debates” to be held at the 6th European Labour History Conference in Barcelona, 16-19 June 2026.

The working group aims to build an interdisciplinary network of scholars studying labour migration from a historical perspective. Although migration currently receives great attention in political and academic debates, it is often discussed as a humanitarian emergency, a social and a security problem, but very rarely as a labour (history) issue. Similarly, research sympathetic to the struggles of migrants tends to denounce the violation of human and civil rights experienced by migrants but very rarely refers to the ways in which migration management policies have historically contributed to the creation of unfree and precarious working conditions. Our network seeks to generate scholarly debate about the interconnectedness of labour and migration history and stresses the importance of labour to analyse change in migration patterns and policies across time and space. We are interested in both empirical and theoretical analysis, and in various types of labour migration, perspectives, chronological and regional foci.

We invite papers addressing labour migration history including (but not limited to) the following topics of interest: 

• Labour mobility in domestic, regional and transnational policies and patterns
• Intra-bloc and East-South labour migration in the Cold War context
• Labour migration beyond normative and methodological nationalism 
• Organised migration schemes (e.g. “Guestworkers”) in a comparative perspective
• Labour precarity and coercion in historical perspective
• Entanglements between forced and voluntary migration 
• Methodological considerations and innovations in labour migration history
• Historical shifts in intersections of gender, race, and class in migrant labour flows
• The impact of migration in sending societies: Remittances and the financialization of migrants 

Please send a 300 to 500-word abstract and a short academic CV (max 300 word) in one MS word file to the WG coordinators listed below by 15 July 2025. The proposal should include your name, current affiliation and contact details. The subject of the email needs to be: “Labour migration history ELHN 2026”. If you think your paper fits well with CfP by other working groups (to be found here https://socialhistoryportal.org/ ) please add their names and we will consider your suggestions in cases it will be possible to organise joint panels.

Please send your proposal and any queries to the following email addresses:

• Sara Bernard, sara.bernard@glasgow.ac.uk 
• Nadia Latif, nl2021@caa.columbia.edu 
• Yannis Papadopoulos, ypapado@ims.forth.gr

Dear colleagues,

attached you will find the program for the upcoming 60th ITH Conference, titled “Workers and Worldmaking: Labor in the Era of Decolonization”, which will take place from 25 to 27 September 2025 at: Bildungshaus Jägermayrhof, Römerstraße 98, A-4020 Linz, Austria.

Please note that early bird registration ends on 30 June 2025.

Registration is available via the following form:

https://forms.gle/x2c3jQURrUnHxGN98

 

If you encounter any difficulties, please contact us at: conference@ith.or.at

 

We look forward to see you in Linz!

 

With best wishes,

Therese Garstenauer (ITH President)

Laurin Blecha (ITH General Secretary)

European University Institute, Badia Fiesolana (Italy), 23­–24 October 2025

This two-day workshop invites scholars to explore how concepts of time have been historically instrumentalised in Eastern Europe from the nineteenth century onwards as a political resource to reinterpret the past, to shape conceptions and experiences of the present, and to exploit the unknowability of the future in response to large-scale global changes and in competition with global dominant time regimes.

In recent years, ‘time’ has emerged as a key analytical category (Koselleck, 2004), a development often labelled as the ‘temporal turn’ in history and the social sciences. Recent scholarship has largely converged around three main themes: the politicisation of time (Clark, 2019), the dynamics of large-scale temporal regimes across societies and cultures (Hartog, 2015), and the multiple scales and dimensions through which historical change unfolds (Braudel, 1984). Researchers focusing on Eastern Europe have actively participated in this shift, using ‘time’ as a lens to re-evaluate the region’s historical specificities, while simultaneously seeking to overcome reductive binaries, such as that between East and West (Colla and Gjuričová, 2023; Deschepper et al., 2024; Rindzevičiūtė, 2023). While these studies have provided valuable insights, they have not yet fully accounted for how global temporal regimes and alternative structures of time in their interaction with local conceptions have shaped Eastern Europe’s political, cultural, and economic trajectories (Brauner, 2024; Edelstein et al., 2020).

Building on these insights, this workshop seeks to examine the intersections of local and global temporalities and their varying manifestation in Eastern Europe. We are particularly interested in how temporal frameworks have been constructed, operationalised, and contested to legitimise political authority, reshape collective memory, and mediate the region’s relationship to global dynamics, either by reinforcing national boundaries or creating new forms of transnational connection, whether despite or because of Eastern Europe’s ongoing engagement with the wider world.

Potential topics may include, but are not limited to:

• the relationship between local and global chronopolitics and their role in ‘discounting’ alternative futures
• the construction, contestation, and negotiation of dominant national and global chronologies and narratives of time
• memory regimes and visions of the future, and their transnational entanglements, such as in the fields of art, architecture, urban planning, and industrial design
• the influence of structural and conjunctural cycles on local and short-term perceptions of episodic time
• the temporality of resources (broadly defined), their commodification, and exchange across regions
• the impact of globalisation, technology, and innovation on subjective and uneven experiences of time and daily rhythms.

We are planning with four panels, each consisting of two papers, followed by a discussion and a Q&A. Dr Marcus Colla (University of Bergen) will give a keynote on the temporalities of Eastern Europe vis-à-vis the West.

Applications are welcome from scholars across the social and historical sciences, broadly defined, provided papers adopt a historical approach. Prospective applicants based in East-Central Europe are especially encouraged to apply.

Please send abstracts of up to 300 words, including a title, and a short biographical note to Dr Szinan Radi, s.radi@exeter.ac.uk by 7 July 2025. If selected, panellists will be requested to pre-circulate an extract of their paper (up to 3,000 words) by 26 September 2025. Accommodation for two nights in Florence (in walking distance to the venue) and travel expenses within Europe will be covered.

The workshop is sponsored by the EUI Max Weber Programme and the EUI Widening Europe Programme.

References

Braudel, F., 1984. The Perspective of The World, Civilization and Capitalism. Collins, London.

Brauner, C., 2024. Time: Temporality in Global History, in: Osterhammel, J., Gänger, S. (Eds.), Rethinking Global History. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 70–91.

Clark, C., 2019. Time and Power: Visions of History in German Politics, from the Thirty Years’ War to the Third Reich. Princeton University Press.

Colla, M., Gjuričová, A., 2023. 1989: The Chronopolitics of Revolution. History and Theory 62, 45–65.

Deschepper, J., Kalashnikov, A., Rossi, F. (Eds.), 2024. Time and Material Culture: Rethinking Soviet Temporalities. Routledge, London.

Edelstein, D., Geroulanos, S., Wheatley, N. (Eds.), 2020. Power and Time: Temporalities in Conflict and the Making of History. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Hartog, F., 2015. Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time. Columbia University Press.

Koselleck, R., 2004. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. Columbia University Press, New York.

Rindzevičiūtė, E., 2023. The Will to Predict: Orchestrating the Future through Science. Cornell University Press, New York.

Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo/Egypt, 10-11 November 2025

This conference seeks to explore key questions: What role did the Catholic Church—both as an institution and as a diverse religious community—play in decolonization? How did Vatican diplomacy interact with local clergy, indigenous populations, and political movements? To what extent were these interactions shaped by competition, hybridization, and exchange? How did decolonization influence doctrinal transformations in the 1940s and 1950s, paving the way for the Second Vatican Council?

Pius XII and Decolonization: Catholicism in North Africa and the Levant, 1939-1958

The Second World War and its aftermath marked a fundamental shift in the Catholic Church’s social and political involvement in North Africa and the Levant. Between 1945 and 1960, the Cold War and the rapid dissolution of European colonial empires transformed the global geopolitical landscape. This period also saw the rise of the “Third World” as a political force and a profound reconfiguration of North-South diplomatic, economic, and cultural relations. Amid its own transformation—one that would culminate in the radical reforms of the 1960s— the Catholic Church (the Holy See, nuncios, delegates, religious orders, clergy, intellectuals) both shaped and was reshaped by these changes.
Building on the work of scholars such as Elizabeth A. Foster, Giuliana Chamedes, and Maria Luisa Sergio, this conference examines the Catholic Church’s engagement with decolonization in North Africa and the Levant during the pontificate of Pius XII (1939–1958). As European empires crumbled and the Mandate System dissolved, the Holy See’s stance shifted to meet local circumstances. Seeking to maintain its influence, the Vatican initially adopted ambiguous positions, at times delaying decolonization while promoting interreligious dialogue through intellectual and pastoral work. Vatican diplomacy and the clergy on the ground had to navigate a delicate balance of religious, social, and political dynamics. As decolonization progressed, the Holy See recognized the need to adapt to the emerging landscape of independent African nations and pragmatically accepted the Africanization of local churches. This process unfolded against the backdrop of a new global order shaped by the Cold War and the Vatican’s firm alignment with the United States in opposing Communism. However, the mosaic of nationalist, religious, and ideological forces driving decolonization introduced new challenges for the Catholic Church, such as having to distance itself from the memory of colonial rule, managing relations with new and sometimes volatile governments, and dealing with the numerous conflicts in the region, both military and not.
This conference seeks to explore key questions: What role did the Catholic Church—both as an institution and as a diverse religious community—play in decolonization? How did Vatican diplomacy interact with local clergy, indigenous populations, and political movements? To what extent were these interactions shaped by competition, hybridization, and exchange? How did decolonization influence doctrinal transformations in the 1940s and 1950s, paving the way for the Second Vatican Council? The conference aims to critically engage with newly available sources, prioritizing transnational perspectives and highlighting the agency of marginalized actors. In addition to the recently declassified archives of Pius XII, we welcome scholars employing diverse methodologies and archival materials.

Topics are not limited to, but may include:
● Role of Vatican diplomacy in decolonization movements
● The development of alternative theological frameworks by Catholic intellectuals in response to decolonization.
● The attitudes and responses of Vatican representatives toward movements for decolonization.
● Instances of conflict and collaboration between local clergy and liberation movements.
● Catholic Perspectives on the legacy of colonialism
● Comparative perspectives on Orthodox churches and Protestantism
● Religious groups resisting decolonization, ignoring it, or fostering neo-colonial relationships
● The gradual replacement of European clergy with an emerging native priesthood.
● The role of Catholic non-governmental organizations in humanitarian action.
● The relationships between the Catholic Church and newly independent governments.
● Interfaith dialogue, particularly with Islam, aimed to involve other religious groups in post-colonial nation-building.
● The impact of local theological, nationalist, anti-racist, and Marxist critiques in reshaping Catholic thought and practice.

Please send a 300-word abstract, the title of your intervention, your current or most recent academic affiliation, a brief CV, and a short bio to erica_moretti@fitnyc.edu and jacopo.pili@uniroma2.it by June 10, 2025.

Notification of acceptance will be sent by June 30, 2025.
Language: The working language of the conference is English.
Costs: Accommodation costs will be covered by the organising committee.
This conference is part of the research network The Global Pontificate of Pius XII at the German Historical Institute in Rome. The event is organised in collaboration with the German Historical in Rome, the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo, and the University of Rome “Tor Vergata.”

Linnaeus University in Växjö (Sweden), 10-12 September 2025

Taking place on September 10-12, 2025, at Linnaeus University in Växjö, Sweden, the Eight European Congress on World and Global History invites participants to explore new avenues in global history. At the congress 400 speakers from diverse disciplinary and national contexts who are organized in more than 80 panels will share their thoughts on how dominating meta-narratives in global history can be overcome by integrating a broader and more diverse range of voices and perspectives.

Eighth European Congress on World and Global History 2025 “Critical Global Histories: Methodological Reflections and Thematic Expansions” - Registration is open now

Taking place on September 10-12, 2025, at Linnaeus University in Växjö, Sweden, the Eight European Congress on World and Global History invites participants to explore new avenues in global history.

At the congress 400 speakers from diverse disciplinary and national contexts who are organized in more than 80 panels will share their thoughts on how dominating meta-narratives in global history can be overcome by integrating a broader and more diverse range of voices and perspectives. In doing so, they will take stock of the thematical and theoretical expansions global history as a field has undergone in the past decades as well use the opportunity to critically self-reflect and to discuss methodological and thematic innovations.

Panels and Roundtables are organized in 11 congress themes:

• Temporalities and periodizations in global history
• Ethical aspects of doing global history
• Expanding the global archive
• Multivocality in global history
• Global history and decoloniality
• Transdisciplinary approaches
• Indigenous perspectives and methodologies
• Challenging modernity from the perspective of global history
• National history, nationalist backlash, and identity politics
• Global environmental history
• Nordic colonialism

A series of special events throughout the congress are equally dedicated to furthering critical reflection, diversity and inclusivity in global history. First and foremost among them the two keynote lectures by Laura de Mello e Souza and Fe/derico Navarrete. Fe/derico Navarrete explores “Cosmohistories, the multiplicity of worlds and their histories“ and presents cosmohistory as a concept that overcomes unilinear, Eurocentric and teleological perspectives on world histories by investigating historical communities as coexisting and colliding entities that refuse to conform to simplistic and homogenizing narratives. In her lecture on “Provisional Forms of Existence in Portuguese America – 16th-18th Centuries“ Laure de Mello e Souza showcases how the blended knowledge of indigenous, African, and Portuguese actors shaped present-day Brazil. Both keynotes, therefore highlight the multivocality and diversity but also the interdependency of diverse communities in history. The Plenary Session “Nordic Colonialism” convened by Janne Lahti equally seeks to overcome notions of exceptionalism and isolationist narratives by showing how the Nordic countries were involved in and connected to global colonial history. Bringing these various strands of academic interests together the Closing Roundtable on “Publishing Global History” organized by Birgit Tremml-Werner and Daniel Laqua investigates how the publishing industry in Global History can become more inclusive both in terms of content as well as in terms of practicalities.

Programm

Please visit our website to view the full program and to register: https://eniugh.org/congress/