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EuroDem Conference
Location: Ruhr-University Bochum, Institute for Social Movements, Clemensstraße 17-19, 44789 Bochum
Date: 26-27 February 2026

The production of discourses around workplace democracy has historically oscillated between hopes for radical transformation and cynical diagnoses of symbolic politics. One could argue, reality often unfolded somewhere in between. In the wake of current debates on the digital transformation of work, automation, AI-driven reorganization of production, and a declared polycrisis (Reckwitz & Rosa 2021, William & Erickson 2024) - i.e. the perception of social crises as overlapping, mutually reinforcing structural phenomena - similar tensions are re-emerging, frequently perceived as entirely novel, though they are deeply rooted in past experiences. Looking back at earlier waves of structural change and transformation – especially since the 1980s – and the industrial-sociological debates they triggered, reveals patterns of friction between institutional, academic, and workplace-level understandings of democratization. Whether under the label of “Humanisation of Work” in Germany, post-Fordism, or lean production, democratic aspirations have often confronted complex realities of economic restructuring, managerial resistance, and changing labor relations. While diagnoses of current transformations in work and production abound, they often focus on isolated phenomena – such as digitalization, AI, or economic restructuring – and address them as singular crises or disruptions. This fragmentation overlooks the historical entanglements and systemic continuities that shape today’s challenges. What remains underexplored is how these developments intersect, reinforce, or contradict one another within broader trajectories of workplace democratization. By bridging past and present, theory and practice, and singular diagnoses with structural analysis, this conference aims to address this gap and foster a more integrated understanding of democratic potentials and limitations in the evolving world of work. This conference seeks to revisit these past and present contradictions through the lens of research that not only observes but aims to shape practice and vice versa to ultimately explore how democratic concepts of work have been transferred, translated and transformed across contexts: from theory to application, from one workplace or country to another, and from one era of change to the next. We are pleased to invite submissions for an interdisciplinary conference exploring the evolving and contested terrain of workplace democracy – between visionary renewal and practical contradiction, between academic discourse and labor experimentation. This on-site conference is organised in the framework of the research project Workplace democracy: a European ideal? Discourses and practices about the democratization of work after 1945 (EURO-DEM) funded by the ANR and DFG.

We welcome contributions that engage with, but are not limited to, the following themes:
Conceptual and Methodological:
• Methods and methodological challenges of transfer research in the field of work and labor.
• Forms and conceptions of transfer research: What does it mean to “transfer” democratic ideals into practice? What are the possibilities and pitfalls?
• Theoretical contributions exploring multi-level or systemic understandings of democracy at work.
Empirical Approaches:
• Case studies exploring how democratic forms of work organization have been imagined, implemented, or resisted.
• Tensions between participatory and representative models of workplace democracy.
• The role of academic discourse in shaping labor policy, union strategies, and workplace reforms.
• Critical analyses of failed, partial, or co-opted democratization processes.
Historical Comparisons:
• Historical reconstructions of labor policy debates and democratization initiatives in times of transformation (e.g. post-Fordism, digitalization, deindustrialization). Comparative perspectives on democratization efforts across sectors or national contexts.
Future Challenges:
•New forms of workplace participation in the digital age: hype or real empowerment?

Submission Guidelines:
We welcome contributions from scholars, practitioners, unionists, and early-career researchers across disciplines including (but not limited to) sociology, labor studies, history, political science, organization studies, and industrial relations. Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words, along with a short biographical note by 30 November 2025 to Sophia.friedel@rub.de. Accepted contributors will be notified early December 2025. Selected papers may be considered for inclusion in an edited volume or special journal issue following the conference.

Contact: Sophia Friedel, Sophia.friedel@rub.de Institute for Social Movements and Joint Research Centre Ruhr-University Bochum / IG Metall Suttner-Nobel-Allee 4, 44803 Bochum

Call for Papers
Conference: “Transition and Renewal: Progressive Utopias and Leftist Reorientation, 1970s–1990s”
Date: 12–14 May, 2027, Venue: University of Copenhagen
Organizers: Knud Andresen (Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg), Mads Jedzini (University of Copenhagen), Detlef Siegfried (University of Copenhagen)

The pervasive sense of ongoing economic, political and everyday crises in contemporary Western societies has prompted attempts at reorientation within the political left. While the Left has traditionally drawn its legitimacy from the promise of progress, the visions of the contemporary Left today seem largely informed by and rooted in the past. What has become of the labour movement's once-radiant future?

To contextualise the transformation of the European Left's visions of the future, it is worthwhile examining the long 1970s. Following the end of the Trente Glorieuses (Jean Fourastié), whose consequences for the party system were encapsulated in Andrei S. Markovits's and Philip S. Gorski’s study Red, Green, and Beyond, utopian visions of the future and perspectives of social progress lost much of their appeal, and the 'utopian energies' (Jürgen Habermas) were exhausted. Whether interpreted as the emergence of a 'presentist present' (Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht) or a time when 'the world fell out of joint' (Aleida Assmann), the political left became increasingly characterised not by hope for a radiant future society, but by a desire to preserve the status quo. This conference will explore the strategies and practices through which the European left responded to the loss of its social utopia, and the extent to which comparable attempts at reorientation can be observed during this period.

We proceed from the assumption that scepticism about the future did not entirely replace the progressive utopia; rather, reorientations varied across social domains and milieus. Our focus encompasses the entire spectrum of the left, including left-liberal currents, social democracy, trade unions, communism and the radical left. As well as Western European countries, we also consider reorientation processes within state socialism. The temporal scope extends from the 1970s to the 1990s.

We invite scholars interested in the history and present of the Left to exchange ideas on this significant yet underexplored transnational phenomenon. We welcome national case studies as well as broader comparative and analytical contributions from transnational and European perspectives. Relevant approaches include inter alia intellectual history, the history of social movements as well as economic, social, and cultural history.

Contributions could address (while not being limited to) the following thematic areas:

• The influence of the new social movements on the formation of left-wing political fields since the 1970s is unmistakable. What visions of the future were represented in these movements, for example in the women’s movement? Were overarching societal utopias formed, and how widespread were they? How did left-wing parties respond to these new challenges?
• How did the semantics of the term “progressive” change since the 1970s?
• In the 1990s, a resurgence of nationalism can be observed. How did left-wing groups react to this development? Was a left-wing nationalism strengthened? To what extent can anti-national counter-reactions be observed?
• How did the developments of the 1990s – the collapse of state socialism and the dominance of neoliberalism – influence left-wing conceptions of progress?
• In 1979, the first European Parliament was elected, and the European integration process was intensified after the collapse of the socialist states. To what extent were demands for a “social Europe” implemented, and was the integration process generally welcomed or rejected?
• Technological progress in the form of automation and computerization, which had promised of a future without physical toil, lost its appeal during the long 1970s. Instead, scepticism towards technology prevailed, especially on the Left. To what extent did this coincide with nostalgic tendencies and “Heimat” discourses?
• Was the emergence of  history workshops (“Geschichtswerkstätten”), that emerged primarily from the Left and dealt with the history of the labor movement, resistance against National Socialism, Jewish history, etc., a reaction to the erosion of the utopia of progress, or did it reinforce it?
• The Left fundamentally understood itself as internationalist. European labour migration as well as refugee migration influenced societies in their own countries. What conceptions of the future arose from this? How did, for example, trade unions react to the increasing relocation of production sites to non-European countries?
• To what extent can solidarity with liberation movements in countries of the Global South (e.g. Nicaragua, El Salvador, South Africa etc.) be seen as compensation for the loss of utopias in European countries?
• On these and other thematic areas, the earlier semantics of progress of the labour movement seem to have been redefined. What forms and variations can be observed? How did the balance shift between the “old” and the “new” Left?

We kindly request the submission of abstracts of up to 2,400 characters by January 15, 2026, to Knud Andresen (andresen@zeitgeschichte-hamburg.de) and Mads Jedzini (mje@hum.ku.dk).
Submitters will be informed of the results by mid-February 2026. 
We will seek external funding for the conference to cover travel and accommodation costs.
In case of any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the organizers via email.

Overview:
Deadline for abstracts: January 15, 2026
Length of abstract: max. 2,400 characters 
Decisions by: Mid-February, 2026
Conference date: 12–14 May, 2027, Conference venue: University of Copenhagen 
Contact: Knud Andresen (andresen@zeitgeschichte-hamburg.de) & Mads Jedzini (mje@hum.ku.dk)

The Biographical Archive of the Workers' Movement from Genoa, Italy (www.abmo.it) is working on a biographical dictionary of the representatives who attended the Congress of Communists and Revolutionary Organizations of the Far East in Russia in December 1921. This Congress, which began in Irkutsk in December, continued in Moscow and Petrograd in January and February of the following year. We have not yet compiled a definitive list of participants; for now, we have about 200 names; for this reason, we are asking all scholars for information on the event and, especially, on the individuals who participated.

If you have any information, please contact Massimo Repetto at mr.abmo@abmo.it

Welcome to Spoken Truths; a workshop for and by spoken word artists.   A workshop by spiritchild and  Fatih about the power of the Word in understanding, shaping  and resisting our political realities. In two sessions, participants will first be introduced to the hip-hop movement in relation to migration and social justice around the globe, and second, they will be invited to write and perform their own texts, guided by experienced and renouned mentors.   📆 When? 5th and 6th of November 2025
🕰️ Hours? 10 AM - 1 PM (NYC time) / 17:00 - 20:00 (BE time)
📍Where? Online via this link https://app.gather.town/app/f8RRYmIL1LRzMxDP/Digidaar ✍️ FREE UPON REGISTRATION This workshop comes in the context of Fatemeh Khezri's residency at Digidaar. Drawing from her work,  titled Perceptual Other, where she explores Afghan oral literature, this workshop aims to showcase the people's need for words, be it poetry, rap or storytelling, in order to preserve culture and resist the daily injustices they face.    Inspired by the freestyle essence of Hip-Hop, this workshop is no regular classroom but rather an open stage to meet, learn, perform, listen, speak up, and be heard. Participants of all levels are very welcome to join!    Kindly, DIGIDAAR team

by Susanne Boehm, Jule Ehms, Bernd Hüttner und Robert Kempf

Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsdeutung sind Teil von Herrschaft. Ab wann Marxismus, meist in der Form des Marxismus-Leninismus, zu einer verdinglichten "Theorie" wurde, ist Teil der Auseinandersetzung mit der Geschichte der Linken. Im Realsozialismus wurde "Sozialismus" zum Herrschaftswissen, das mühsam vom Eispanzer befreit werden musste und muss, während zugleich in den kapitalistischen Staaten Frauen und andere das Nebenwiderspruchsdenken linker Theorie und die patriarchalen Strukturen in linken Gruppen und Parteien bekämpften. Eine Auseinandersetzung/Kampf, der bis heute andauert.

Eine Abwendung vom Marxismus ist zumindest in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts ein politisch-ideologisches transnationales Momentum bei Neuen Sozialen Bewegungen, egal ob es sich dabei um Umweltbewegungen, die den linken Fortschrittsoptimismus kritisierten, die autonomia operaia in Italien oder die niederländische Schwulen- oder Frauenbewegung handelte.

Doch stellt sich insgesamt die Frage: Was ist eigentlich "Geschichte von links"? Und wie lassen sich die Auseinandersetzungen darum in "die Geschichte von/der Linken" einordnen? In den vorliegenden   historischer Reflexionen werden zum einen Herausforderungen beleuchtet, die herrschaftskritische Geschichtsarbeit mit sich bringt. Und zum zweiten werden konkrete Beispiele für vier "Bewegungen" exemplarisch dargestellt.

Über die Herausgeber:innen

Susanne Boehm, Historikerin, ist wiss. Mitarbeiterin im SFB 1567 Virtuelle Lebenswelten der Universität-Bochum; Forschungs- und Lehrtätigkeiten in den Feldern Geschlechtersoziologie und Bildungswissenschaften mit den Schwerpunkten Scientific Reasoning und Wissenschaftskonzepte, forschungsorientierte Lehr-Lernsettings, Politiken Neuer Sozialer Bewegungen, Intersektionalität, Bildung und Inklusion.
Jule Ehms studierte Geschichte und Philosophie an der LMU Halle, der Universität Wien und an der University of Notre Dame (USA) und promovierte 2021 am Institut für Soziale Bewegungen zur Betriebsarbeit der syndikalistischen Freien Arbeiter-Union Deutschlands; weitere Forschungs- und Lehrtätigkeiten in den Bereichen Geschichte und Theorie der Arbeiter:innenbewegung, Erinnerungsgeschichte und marxistische
Philosophie.
Bernd Hüttner, geb. 1966, Politikwissenschaftler, Referent für Zeitgeschichte und Geschichtspolitik der Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. Koordinator des Gesprächskreises Geschichte der RLS. Interessengebiete: Geschichte und Geschichtsschreibung der neuen sozialen Bewegungen und der undogmatischen Linken, freie Archive der sozialen Bewegungen, künstlerische Avantgarden 1890-1933.
Robert Kempf, promovierter Historiker, verdient seinen Lebensunterhalt außerhalb der Wissenschaft. Er wünscht sich, dass das gesellschaftskritische Potenzial der Geschichtswissenschaften stärker genutzt und reflektiert wird. Über die realen Verhältnisse im akademischen Betrieb macht er sich jedoch keine Illusionen.

Open access: https://www.dampfboot-verlag.de/de/bucher/making-history

Linz/Austria

Date: 17–19 September 2026

CALL FOR PAPERS

Ever since the 19th century, the “social question” has been the fundamental cornerstone of labour and many other social movements. While the “social question” has by no means been conclusively solved – to the contrary, recent years have seen a return of its urgency (Breman et al. 2019) – the “ecological question” has arisen as an equally fundamental predicament from the 1970s on. Social movements have responded quickly to this new challenge, although those representing labour retained an ambivalent position, often adhering to the imperatives of “growth”. Meanwhile, official acknowledgement by states and other institutional actors of the ecological question has been much slower, more uneven and fluctuating (at best). By now, the bundle of human-made ecological crises have reached a point where most earth scientist see an actual breaching of ecological thresholds, not only in relation to climate change but also six of nine processes for which “planetary boundaries” have been defined.
In this context, the interdisciplinary field of political ecology (which dates to at least the 1970s) has experienced a spectacular boom. In a certain sense, it has become the interdisciplinary critical social science of our days, a field in which both academic and political concerns converge. In the English-speaking world, political ecology has proved to be strongly inflected by historical reasoning, with authors such as Timothy Mitchell, Jason Moore, or Andreas Malm highlighting the entanglements between material extraction, energy carriers (particularly fossil ones), ecological over-use, capitalist economic development, and exploitation. While the history of work and labour relations have a place in these studies, many commentators have noticed an ongoing non-communication between labour history and political ecology. Indeed, the relationship between labour and ecological perspectives reveals several tensions. One of the reasons for this complicated relation is the long-standing reservation that has seen studies related to “labour” as fraught with an undue nature–society dualism and an obsession with “the industrial” and “production”. Nevertheless, substantial scholarship has emerged at the intersection of “labour” and “environmental history” as well as “political ecology”:
Recently, for instance, the unintended consequences of focussing the ecological question on “consumption” was criticized, calling for re-centering the analysis on the interplay of the use of nature (including animals) and the exploitation of workers with both converging in (and creating resistance around) the work-process (Schaupp 2024). Others called for the need to include unpaid reproductive and care work in any analysis of the ecological implications of labour, and at the same time suggested to pay more attention to those moments in which labour activism has brought up ecological concerns, thus creating a kind of “labour environmentalism” (Barca 2024). The “commodity frontier” approach, in turn, has called for merging the perspective of global labour history with those of ecological economics, commodity chain analysis and other fields to pinpoint the complex interplay of factors at the sites of (mainly) agrarian commodity production (Beckert et al. 2021).
It thus seems both timely and necessary to bring global labour history and historical political ecology into a more structured and fruitful dialogue, to assess existing research at the intersection of both and to explore further avenues of research. This conference will insist on a differential, and thus politicized view of the major referents of past and current ecological predicaments (such as “global warming”) with “labour” appearing as one major category of differentiation. We welcome proposals on all historical periods and all world-regions as long as they relate historical labour studies to recent concerns of political ecology (and vice versa). While no definite list of possible topics can be established, papers might explore one of the following themes:
- Conceptual and theoretical discussions about the ways of bringing labour history and the different strands of political ecology into dialogue, including the debates about “anthropocene vs. capitalocene” (or “plantationocene”), social metabolism, climate and earth science vs. the humanities, differential time-scales, unequal ecological exchange, yet also “energy” as a foundational “connceptual connector” that has, from the 19th century, allowed translating work, heat, and (fossilfuelled) into one another.
- The bio-physical properties of primary or semi-processed materials – from bio-mass through ores and non-metallic minerals to fossil and other energy carriers – and their implications for work processes and logics of labour resistance.
- Animals and/as "workers": Papers might explore conceptual and historical intersections between animal labour and human labour, and the role of animals in production processes. Contributions might address theoretical questions about the boundaries of "work," historical transformations in animalhuman work relationships, or contemporary debates about animal labour rights in the context of
ecological crisis.
- Labour relations and labour struggles in the first transition towards fossil fuels (19th century), both in local constellations and in relation to unequal relations between world-regions. The role of labour relations and labour struggles in subsequent shifts in primary energy provision (from coal to oil to atomic energy to alternative energy carriers) and the primary technology of propulsion (combustion, electricity).
- The interplay between labour relations and labour struggles, on the one hand, and ecological factors, on the other, in the extraction of energy carriers like coal, oil/gas, and radioactive ore. This can include both localized studies and perspectives that focus on the inter-regional and colonial entanglements in the extraction and production of energy carriers. 
- The effects of environmental degradation and ecological crises on work and workers’ activism. This includes: the impact of “climate” and its concrete experimental dimension (heat, cold, extreme weather events) on work and workers; and “Labour environmentalism” and other instances in which labour and environmental struggles have intersected, including contention over issues of health hazards in workplaces and workers’ communities as well as struggles for urban renewal vis-à-vis the impact of industrial production. Here again, a focus on experiences with a transnational aspect as well as on the scalar tensions between the planetary, the global, the regional, and the local are particularly welcome.
- Discussions of temporality and futurity that examine notions like "energy/green transition" or timelines of projected catastrophe, analyzing how workers and labour movements orient themselves toward these horizons of expectation or contest them. This includes investigating intersections between planetary futures and discussions about the future of work, both conceptually and
materially.
- Ecological changes and labour migration: examining the carbon footprint of labour migration patterns and the connection between the geopolitics of remittance economies and environmental degradation. Papers might explore historical and contemporary cases of environmentally-induced migration, the ecological consequences of remittance-based development, and the uneven distribution of
environmental harms along migration corridors. Contributions addressing the intersection of climate justice and migrant labour rights are particularly welcome.
- The interplay of work and ecology in agrarian production both in localized subsistence agriculture, regionalized peasant production and globally connected cash crop production in the context of dynamic “commodity frontiers”. Beyond the classical cash crops such as stimulants (coffee, tea), sugar, tropical fruits, or grains, this may also include studies about livestock farming, forestry, drugs, flowers, etc. Also, studies about labour and labour struggles in the further processing of agrarian produce are welcome, for instance about meat processing.
- Intersections of species extinction/biodiversity loss and work, as evidenced in occupations like beekeeping or changes in rice, coffee, and other agricultural production systems. Papers might examine how biodiversity loss transforms labour processes, how workers adapt to or resist these transformations, and how labour movements engage with broader biodiversity conservation efforts.
- The work of geoengineering (intentional or not) as a field of ecological intervention with significant implications for labour. Papers might address the labour requirements of proposed large-scale geoengineering projects, the forms of expertise and manual labour involved, etc. Contributions that situate geoengineering within longer histories of human attempts to engineer environments through
labour are especially encouraged.
- Following the French approach of collapsologie (Servigne/Stevens 2020), the potential of a future civilizational devolution through an unfettered ecological crisis and its implications from a labour history perspective, e.g. in terms of workers coping with situations of extreme environmental precarity. In a similar vein, papers could explore the labour-related dimensions of either “mitigation” or “adaptation” as well as the labour politics of “environmental emergency”.

SUBMISSION

Proposed papers should include:
- Abstract (max. 300 words)
- Biographical note (continuous text, max. 200 words)
- Full address and Email address
The abstract of the suggested paper should contain a separate paragraph explaining how and (if applicable) to which element(s) or question(s) of the Call for Papers the submitted paper refers. The short CV should give information on the applicant’s contributions to the field of labour history, broadly defined, and specify (if applicable) relevant publications. For the purpose of information, applicants are invited to attach a copy of one of these publications to their application.
Proposals to be sent to our conference manager Laurin Blecha: conference@ith.or.at

CONFERENCE PUBLICATION

The ITH aims, depending on the coherence on quality of the conferences paper, to publish edited volumes arising from its conferences. Since 2013 the ITH conference volumes have been published in Brill’s Studies in Global Social History Series, edited by Marcel van der Linden. The ITH encourages the conference participants to submit their papers to this publication project. High-quality papers will be selected by the volume’s editors.

TIME SCHEDULE

Submission of proposals: 30 January 2026
Notification of acceptance: 2 March 2026
Full papers or presentation version: 14 August 2026

PREPARATORY GROUP

David Mayer
Marcel van der Linden
On Barak
Therese Garstenauer
Laurin Blecha

THE ITH AND ITS MEMBERS

The ITH is one of the worldwide known forums of the history of labour and social movements. The ITH favours research pursuing inclusive and global perspectives and open-ended comparative thinking. Following its tradition of cooperating with organisations of the labour movement, the ITH likewise puts emphasis on the conveyance of research outside the academic research community itself. Currently ca. 100 member institutions and a growing number of individual members from five continents are associated with the ITH.
Information on ITH publications in the past 50 years:
https://www.ith.or.at/en/publications/
Online ITH membership application form:
https://www.ith.or.at/de/mitgliedschaft/

Vulnerability and Power in Late Antiquity (4th-9th centuries)
Second International Postgraduate Conference of the Ghent Centre for Late Antiquity (GCLA) 
27-29 April 2026, Ghent (BE)

Understanding the dynamics of vulnerability and power is important for the study of any period, not least for Late Antiquity (broadly defined here as spanning the fourth to ninth centuries, across a wide geographical scope), where we see significant negotiations of power in a time of great transformation.

While power has often been the focus of scholarly attention on Late Antiquity (e.g., in the spheres of religion, politics, and literature), vulnerability, closely intertwined with power, has received less sustained attention. By focusing on vulnerability, we seek to provoke a reassessment of ongoing research on power in Late Antiquity, and invite a reconsideration of power from fresh perspectives.

We are interested not only in larger late antique institutions of power, but also the more vulnerable groups of society. Contemporary fields shaped by the insights of vulnerable communities, including decolonial and intersectional thought, have reimagined resilience, agency and systemic vulnerability; thus we seek to bring late antique society into conversation with contemporary approaches drawn from the studies of migration, gender and sexuality, disability, childhood, family structures, socioeconomic inequalities, and so on. Another important area for consideration is environmental vulnerability, including, for example, the significance of extreme weather events and climate change on the levels of ecology, society, and culture. A more literal understanding of vulnerability (i.e., the potential to be wounded), is also relevant here: war, violence, illness, and the vulnerable body are rich fields for inquiry. Furthermore, as researchers, we are part of institutions that are shaped by dynamics of vulnerability and power. We therefore think that inquiries into Late Antiquity can enrich and deepen meta-disciplinary reflections on academia as a sphere of vulnerability and power.

Postgraduate researchers from the following fields are especially invited to participate: Arabic Studies, Archaeology, Art History, Biblical Studies, History, Jewish Studies, Linguistics, Literary Studies, Reception Studies, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Theology. We welcome researchers working with languages such as Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Georgian, Gothic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Persian, Slavonic, Sogdian, Syriac.

Possible topics may include but are not limited to:

• The dynamics of vulnerability associated with Late Antiquity specifically – e.g., interrogating conceptions of Late Antiquity as a period of vulnerability, decline, and crisis; reflecting on the historical vulnerability of Late Antiquity as a discipline
• Theories and practices of vulnerability and power in literature, philosophy, and politics; how individuals or groups in power dealt with their own vulnerabilities.
• Representations of vulnerability and power in art, literature, architecture, and so on.
• Negotiations of vulnerability and power in a variety of social contexts, such as in the family, church, city, state, or on an imperial level.
• Attitudes towards tolerance, exclusion or persecution of vulnerable groups, such as religious, ethnic, and linguistic minorities, or those experiencing poverty, illness, or disability.
• Resilience and the power of resistance among vulnerable groups.
• Management of and responses to environmental risks such as drought, earthquake, fire, and so on.

We invite applications from postgraduate researchers (PhDs and advanced Master’s students). To be considered for a 20-minute paper, please send an email to gclaphdconf@ugent.be with a paper title, an abstract of max 300 words, a short bibliography (max 10 titles), and a brief academic biography by 7 January 2026.

Applicants will be notified by early February 2026. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

The organizing committee
Carlo Emilio Biuzzi, Justine De Rouck, Tanguy Desimone, Angelo Gargiulo, Thomas Girault, Giovanni Gomiero, Karl Robinson, Ricarda Schier, Leila Williamson

Publication, discount until 7 November 2025

The volume Working in Greece and Turkey. A comparative labour history from Empires to nation-states, 1840-1940, eds. Leda Papastefanaki & M. Erdem Kabadayi, (Series: International Studies in Social History, Vol. 33, New York/Oxford: Berghahn, 2020) has a 35% discount on the occasion of the 2nd International Conference "From Tobacco Workers' Movements to Contemporary Social Movements" (Kavala, Greece, 18-19 October 2025).

The publisher, Berghahn Books has offered to anyone interested a 35% discount for the book valid until November 7th, 2025. Although the discount is limited in time, I would like to share this information with you. If in case that you, colleagues or especially your academic institutions are interested, you or they can follow up and use the promotion code “PAPA35” at  https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/PapastefanakiWorking for the discount (from 138 GBP to 89.70 GBP)..

The National Museum of Lithuania invites proposals for the international conference Scattered, Tracked, Connected: New Approaches to Dispersed Heritage, to be held in Vilnius, 29–30 April 2026.

How do we work with heritage that is no longer whole, no longer here – or perhaps never truly was? The conference seeks to explore the fragmented, displaced, or deliberately dispersed nature of cultural heritage, and how museums and memory institutions reassemble meaning through research, digital tools, and collaboration. 

We welcome 20-minute papers on topics including: 

• Mapping dispersed heritage through provenance and documentation 
• Ethics, restitution, and shared authority 
• Digital reconnections and virtual reunification 
• Exhibiting loss and absence 
• Curatorial and community approaches to scattered collections 

Abstracts (250–300 words) and short biographies (up to 100 words) should be submitted by 19 December 2025 via the registration form. 
Deadline for submissions: 19 December 2025

Letters of acceptance will come out by 16 January 2026. 

Participation is free of charge; travel and accommodation are self-funded. 

A peer-reviewed publication will follow the conference. 

More information: https://lnm.lt/en/events/international-conference-scattered-tracked-con…;

Contacts: conference2026@lnm.lt 

The Social History Archive launches curated collections of primary source material for researchers

• The Social History Archive has launched new ‘Primary Source Series’ - a set of curated collections of primary source material to aid research and teaching
• The collections offer direct access to millions of historical records and newspapers, tailored to research themes
• Collections include both archival materials and historical newspapers, curated in partnership with leading repositories and publishers

The Social History Archive, the most comprehensive collection of British, Irish and former Empire historical resources online, has launched its new Primary Source Series, a major digital initiative designed to offer tailored support to academic research, teaching and learning.

These curated collections bring together digitised historical records and newspapers and offer direct access to the voices, documents, and experiences that shaped the past.

Developed to include materials from leading institutions including The National Archives and the British Library, the Primary Source Series are organised thematically—by topic, region, or time period—making it easier for researchers and educators to locate and explore original source material.

The collections span centuries of history and include millions of pages of content, from illustrated journalism and regional newspapers to military service records, crime records, emigration documents, and colonial publications.

Twenty-four Primary Source Series are already available, with more planned in the future. Key Series include:

• Women and War in Britain in the Twentieth Century: This series delves into the experiences of women taking on essential roles during First and Second World Wars in Britain, both within the military and on the Home Front. It brings together images and transcripts from original records held at The National Archives related to the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS or Wrens), the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF), and the Women’s Land Army (Land Girls).
• Voices of Empire: Newspapers from British Colonial Territories 1771-1962: Discover over 55 newspaper titles from the British Library’s British Newspaper Archive collection offering insight into the British Empire, its expansion, and the narratives that shaped its rule. Covering territories across multiple continents, this collection reveals how the British press was used as a tool of imperial control and influence to justify colonisation under the guise of ‘progress’ and ‘civilisation’, and highlights the complex ties between colonialism, slavery, and race, among many other topics.
• Crime, Prisons and Punishment in England and Wales 1770-1935: This series consists of more than 1.9 million images from The National Archives related to individuals who passed through the justice system in England and Wales between 1770 and 1935. Revealing information on trials, sentences and prison life can be found within.

Designed specifically for use in higher education, Primary Source Series enable academics to conduct original research using authentic historical evidence, while also providing educators with rich resources for teaching source analysis and historical thinking. Students benefit from hands-on access to primary materials, fostering independent inquiry and deeper engagement with the past.

Primary Source Series are fully searchable and supported by structured metadata, allowing users to navigate complex archives with ease. Whether exploring societal developments, political change, cultural history, or the legacy of empire, the series opens up a wealth of data and new possibilities for study and scholarship.

Nick Stewart, Lead of The Social History Archive, said: “We’re delighted to launch our new Primary Source Series. These thematic content collections offer faculties exactly what their academics and researchers need: tailored, high quality primary source data for their area of study. And there are more to come – we’re developing these on an ongoing basis so we can cater to multiple specialisms.”

For more information or to request a free trial, please email sales@thesocialhistoryarchive.com or visit https://www.thesocialhistoryarchive.com/primary-source-series

Labour & Society Research Group (LSRG)
7-8 May 2026
Newcastle University
Armstrong Building, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU

The British General Strike of 1926: New Directions of Research

To commemorate the centenary of the British General Strike and miners lock-out, Newcastle University’s Labour & Society Research Group (LSRG) are organising a conference that revisits the historical experience of 1926 through the lens of new scholarship that is concerned with the global, spatial and maritime turns in labour history.

What has emerged from these histories is a better understanding of how labour movements and political groups of various kinds have interrupted or redirected the flows of materials, capital, and people.

While there is a vast and thriving literature on the General Strike of 1926, there is still a lack of research that investigates concretely how, under what conditions, the spatial-temporal dynamics of this event disrupted the carboniferous commodity chains and wider circulation of capital during the dispute.

This conference aims to bring together papers that focus on concrete histories of solidarity and the General Strike, whether at sites of coal extraction, transportation, distribution, and everywhere inbetween.

Moreover, the conference also welcomes papers that do not exclusively focus on Britain as it seeks to address the General Strike’s global entanglements, to further understand the extent transnational networks, unions and activists participated in the labour stoppage. In view of the diverse character of labour history, the conference aims to highlight 1926’s eclectic mix of voices, namely its racial, ethnic and gender diversity.

Questions that can be addressed include:

• Contentious politics. Does global, spatial and maritime contention change our understanding of the General Strike: its chronology, spatiality, and legacy?
• Mobility. How did contested mobility over coal, commodities, water, vessels, coal staithes, ports, docks, road, railways, mines shape power relations?
• Geographies of resistance. How do these geographies of extraction, transport, and distribution shape common struggles during the strike? How did workers and communities in both rural- and urban- environments interact?
• Spatial Agency. What self-organization, spatial agency and repertoires of action did worker networks and organisations develop? What effect did this have on the government’s strike-breaking machinery? How was solidarity practiced in the distinctive spaces at the everyday and experiential level? What factors undermined this solidarity?
• Class, gender, race, and ethnicity. Did everyday experience and solidarity transcend racial, gender, and status-based fault lines in distinctive ways to stop the mobility of coal and the circulation of capital?
• Global and transnationalism. What were the Strike’s global entanglements? What role did global events and transnational activism play in strengthening or restraining cooperation from below during the strike’s trajectory?
• Memory and postmemory. How has the labour movement remembered and represented their historical entanglements with the General Strike? What role have narratives of the General Strike played in shaping local, regional, and global identities? What are the legacies of the General Strike and how may they affect contemporary politics?

Please send in proposals for papers consisting of an abstract of 150-250 words, plus a short bio by 6 February 2026 to: joe.redmayne@newcastle.ac.uk. Papers should focus on 1926 and can focus on any geographic location. The organisers will promote the publication of the papers in a ‘new directions’ collection in a journal of the field (more details TBA).

As the recent General Strikes in Italy and Greece exemplified (during September-October 2025), a general stoppage of labour by workers in all or most industries remains a powerful strategy of the working-class movement. This action has coincided with a global wave of blockades, port disruptions, strikes, and slowdowns, particularly at critical nodes like transport hubs and arms manufacturing sites of Israeli militarism.

While we intend this to be a scholarly conference, we also wish to make space for an active dialogue between people studying protest and industrial disputes in the past and practitioners of solidarity in the present (including, for example, present day activists and trade unionists, and more). We are convinced that such mutual learning can generate insights that will enrich both scholarship and activism.

For this reason, we hope to include one round table, open to a public audience, where activists involved in solidarity today reflect on connections to solidarity in the past during the General Strike, based on the presentations at the conference.

People who would be interested in joining the conference based on their involvement in present-day solidarity are invited to write a short e-mail to the conference organisers explaining the nature of their work.

For more information about the Labour & Society Research Group (LSRG) and its activities, please visit: https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/labourandsociety

Limited travel/accommodation support will be available, meant to support early career scholars or participants who cannot draw on institutional funding.

The conference is kindly supported by the Leverhulme Trust, Newcastle University, the Labour & Society Research Group.

For enquiries, feel free to contact organisers: Joe Redmayne, joe.redmayne@newcastle.ac.uk. 

Call for Abstracts
Peace in the Age of Forever Wars
Temple University, Philadelphia, USA

April 3–4, 2026

We invite submissions for an interdisciplinary symposium, which will bring together academics from the humanities and social sciences to present new scholarship on how to achieve and maintain peace in the age of forever wars. The hope is to reexamine old frameworks and to bring to light new ones, to understand more deeply the core questions of peace and conflict in historical and transnational context. The symposium is organized under the auspices of Temple’s Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy (CENFAD). We will cover the cost of travel and accommodations for all participants.

Questions of interest may include:

• What is the aim of forever wars? Can forever wars aim at or produce peace?
• Does understanding peace require a separate and distinct framework from war?
• Can war still be defended as a means for promoting a stable international order? For example, as the EU pledges to increase its military spending, should we predict a corresponding increase in stability?
• How does the examination of historical precedents of peace processes (both failures and successes) help us to understand what a viable peace process might look like in Israel/Gaza and in Russia/Ukraine?
• What are the conditions, if any, under which victory in war can produce peace? What are the conditions, if any, under which losing a war can produce peace?
• Why has peace acquired a bad reputation – as a weak position, as akin to appeasement, as utopian?
• What kinds of mechanisms can international law and global human rights organizations develop to promote peaceful cooperation among states?

Interested participants are warmly invited to submit abstracts of approximately 500 words and a short CV (1–2 pages) to Profs. Lee-Ann Chae at leeannchae@temple.edu and Petra Goedde at pgoedde@temple.edu, by November 21, 2025.

More information can be found on the Challenging War website.