Social and Labour History News

The Moving Past: A Collection of Archival Films is a website that streams century-old films for research and teaching, added 6 more films in November. This brings the total number of films available to 21. These additions add thematic depth to the resource and increase the range of industries covered by the site, which streams Canadian made films made between 1918 and 1930. Here are some short summaries of the recently added productions:

The Rugged Road to Learning (1921) follows a group of school children as they journey to their one room schoolhouse. The work of the overburdened teacher is also depicted. The film, made in 1922, is an extended narrative in favour of school consolidation, which was an important subject in early 20th century Ontario. Miners in the Making, also from 1922, explores the industrial education provided to young men by the 'Mining School' which opened in Haileybury, Ontario in 1912. The earliest film in this group, from 1919, explains how 'modern housewives' can avoid the drudgery of baking by purchasing factory made biscuits.  Three films are from British Columbia. On the Skeena presents salmon fishing on the mighty Skeena River in 1922, Sawmilling from tree felling to the completed lumber, from 1930 can be seen in Old Logging Mills. The longest film on The Moving Past, To the Ports of the World Through Vancouver, is a three-part production that details the goods that shipped and the labour that was necessary to make this possible. Made for by the Harbour Commission, this production is from 1927. 

 

The films on The Moving Past are resources for teaching and research and are available free of charge. However, donations to support the project are welcome. 

Organiser: Jacob Robinson Institute for the History of Individual and Collective Rights, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Location: Mount Scopus, Jerusalem Postcode: 9190501 City: Jerusalem Country: Israel Takes place: In attendance Dates: 11.05.2026 - 12.05.2026 Deadline: 15.01.2026   International Conference on the 60th Anniversary of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD)

The year 2025 marks the 60th anniversary of a pivotal milestone in the global fight against racism: on December 21, 1965, the United Nations adopted the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), a landmark treaty aimed at combating racial prejudice and advancing human rights.

The adoption of the Convention followed complex and often contentious debates among states, international institutions, and civil society actors. Against the backdrop of ICERD’s 60th anniversary, this international symposium will bring together scholars to reflect on the history and legacy of the Convention. We also welcome papers addressing broader questions related to anti-racist and anti-antisemitism activism, as well as the evolving role of international law, diplomacy, and civil society in confronting racial and ethnic hatred.

Submission Guidelines
We invite scholars to submit proposals for 20-minute presentations. Please send an abstract of up to 350 words, along with a short bio (up to one page), by January 15, 2026, to Dr. Tom Eshed at tom.eshed@mail.huji.ac.il. The event will take place in person at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Participants will be provided with single-occupancy accommodation in Jerusalem for the duration of the event. Economy-class flight expenses will be reimbursed, subject to budgetary considerations.

For further inquiries, please contact Dr. Eshed at the email address above.

Dortmund/Germany   Veranstalter: Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe, Historische Kommission für Westfalen (Dr. Julia Paulus, Münster; Prof. Dr. Antje Flüchter, Bielefeld) Ausrichter: Dr. Julia Paulus, Münster; Prof. Dr. Antje Flüchter, Bielefeld Veranstaltungsort: Dortmund oder Gelsenkirchen PLZ: 44122 Ort: Dortmund Land: Deutschland Findet statt: In Präsenz Vom - Bis: 11.06.2026 - 12.06.2026 Deadline: 31.01.2026 Website: https://www.historische-kommission.lwl.org/de/  

Mit einer Tagung möchte sich die Historische Kommission für Westfalen anhand von Fallbeispiele der Frage nähern, was eine „Westfälin“ in verschiedenen Kontexten ausmacht und ausmachte. Dafür werden Beiträge gesucht.

Geschlechterverhältnisse und Geschlechterordnungen in Westfalen

Mit einer Tagung möchte sich die Historische Kommission für Westfalen anhand von Fallbeispiele der Frage nähern, was eine „Westfälin“ in verschiedenen Kontexten ausmacht und ausmachte. Dafür werden Beiträge gesucht. Was sind Westfälinnen? Was verbindet Pauline zur Lippe mit einer Magd im mittelalterlichen Bielefeld? Was eine aus der Türkei kommende Fabrikarbeiterin mit einer Stiftsdame? Was eine FDP-Politikerin des nordrhein-westfälischen Landtags mit einer Leineweberin aus dem Ravensberger Land? Die Historische Kommission für Westfalen möchte sich mit dieser Tagung anhand verschiedener Fallbeispiele der Frage nähern, was eine „Westfälin“ in verschiedenen Kontexten ausmacht und ausmachte.

Welche Differenzkategorien (z.B. Klasse, Besitz, Alter, Religion/Konfession, Stand, ethnische Herkunft, sexuelle Orientierung bzw. geschlechtliche Identität) erhielten zu welcher Zeit welche Bedeutungen. Auf welchen Geschlechterordnungen basierten die Handlungsmöglichkeiten von Frauen und Mädchen, wie verhielten sie sich zu ihren ethnischen, religiösen, sozialen und geschlechtlichen (Identitäts-)Zugehörigkeiten? In welchen (sozialen, kulturellen, wirtschaftlichen, etc.) Räumen entfalteten welche Differenzkategorien ihre Wirkung oder traten in den Hintergrund? Welche Verläufe und welche Veränderungen lassen sich über die Zeit hinweg feststellen?

Mit diesen Fragestellungen möchten wir Sie einladen, Vorschläge für Vorträge einzureichen, die sich mit „Geschlechterverhältnissen und Geschlechterordnungen in Westfalen“ zwischen Mittelalter und Zeitgeschichte beschäftigen.

Folgende Themengruppen werden im Focus der Tagung stehen, die wir mit Ihnen gerne aus einer intersektionalen und systematischen Perspektive diskutieren möchten: Familie und Partnerschaft, Arbeit und Erwerb, Fremdheit und Migration, Erziehung und Bildung, Religion und Kirche, Körper und Gesundheit, Sexualität(en), geschlechtliche Identitäten, Politik und soziale Teilhabe, Kultur und Freizeit.

Abstracts im Umfang von höchstens zwei DIN A4-Seiten senden Sie bitte bis zum 31. Januar 2026 entweder an die Geschäftsstelle der Kommission (hiko@lwl.org) oder an Julia.Paulus@lwl.org.

Programm

Die Tagung wird im Juni 2026 in stattfinden.

Kontakt

Dr. Burkhard Beyer
Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe
Historische Kommission für Westfalen
Dr. Burkhard Beyer
Freiherr-vom-Stein-Platz 1, 48147 Münster
Tel.: 0251 591-4721
Mail: burkhard.beyer@lwl.org

Organiser: Ekaterina Oleshkevich; Zuzanna Kołodziejska-Smagała; Anna Kałużna Location: Wrocław University Postcode: 50-137 City: Wrocław Country: Poland Takes place: In attendance Dates: 06.07.2026 - 08.07.2026 Deadline: 15.01.2026  

The conference “Underprivileged Bodies: Marginality and Minority in Europe, 1850–1939,” intends to explore how bodies were defined, classified, and disciplined in modern European societies through the intersection of state power, medical science, and culture. Focusing on marginalized communities—ethnic, religious, gender, class, age, sexual, and disabled groups—the conference places particular emphasis on the Jewish body as a site of modern anxieties and negotiations. The conference will be held on July, 6–8, 2026, at the Department of Jewish Studies, Wrocław University.

 

Underprivileged Bodies: Marginality and Minority in Europe, 1850–1939

The organizing committee invites proposals for papers for the upcoming conference “Underprivileged Bodies: Marginality and Minority in Europe, 1850–1939”, to be held on July 6–8, 2026, at the Department of Jewish Studies, Wrocław University.

From the rise of industry to the emergence of racial science and eugenics, from the expansion of empires to the contestation of class, gender, and disability norms—the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed a profound transformation in the ways bodies were perceived, categorized, and regulated. This transformation was driven by the increasing entanglement of state power, medical knowledge, and culture in the definition of bodily norms and the disciplining of deviant bodies. Scientific discourses strove to codify human difference, often along biological or racial lines; social institutions—from schools and hospitals to asylums and prisons—intervened in the everyday lives of the young, the poor, the sick, and the deviant; and both popular and elite, textual and visual cultures became invested in delineating the “fit” and “unfit,” the “civilized” and the “primitive,” the “normal” and the “abnormal.”

This conference seeks to explore how marginalized and minority bodies were imagined, categorized, and governed in Europe between 1850 and 1939, as well as how individuals and communities experienced, performed, and contested these regimes of representation and control. We welcome papers that address a broad range of minorities—including ethnic, religious, gender, class, age, sexual, and disabled communities—but we place particular emphasis on the Jewish body as a key site of modern European anxieties, fantasies, and negotiations. We are also interested in exploring diversity within Jewish society itself, including the experiences of Jewish women, children, the poor, migrants, or religious and cultural sub-groups who were subject to multiple layers of marginalization.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):
- Visual and scientific representations of Jewish and other minority bodies—by the minorities themselves or through dominant discourses
- Minority and marginalized bodies in institutional settings: prisons, asylums, schools, hospitals, poorhouses
- Gendered and queer embodiments
- Jewish laboring bodies: class, migration, gender, occupation
- Public health campaigns, hygiene discourses, and the surveillance of Jewish and other minority bodies
- Narratives and experiences of illness, disability, and corporeal difference in Jewish and non-Jewish communities
- Embodiments of childhood, adolescence, and old age in minority contexts
- Jewish and other minority bodies in imperial and transimperial settings: the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and German empires
- Comparative or transnational approaches to marginal bodies across European regions, states, or empires

The geographical scope of our interest includes eastern, central, and southern Europe, including the Balkans. We particularly encourage contributions that foreground Jewish experiences while situating them in broader comparative, transnational, or interdisciplinary frameworks.

Submission Guidelines:
Please send a 300-word abstract along with a short bio (max 200 words) to the email underprivilegedbodies@gmail.com by January 15, 2026. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by February 28, 2026.

For questions, please contact Dr. Ekaterina Oleshkevich at ekaterina.oleshkevich@mail.huji.ac.il or Dr. Zuzanna Kołodziejska-Smagała at zuzanna.kolodziejska-smagala@uwr.edu.pl.

The conference is organized with the support of the Department of Jewish Studies, Wrocław University, and Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The Archive of Social Democracy is expanding its online portal for researching and accessing archive and library materials as well as the digital publications of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. The platform is divided into four different collection groups, which can be accessed via the central home page.
The Historical Press of German Social Democracy consists of around 30 newspapers with approximately 300,000 digitised pages. Using optical character recognition, all titles are searchable in full text. In addition, automated named entity recognition has been implemented, enabling navigation via automatically generated indexes. The entities have also been linked to authority data using named entity linking. The newspapers can also be accessed conveniently via a calendar mode, a map display or a targeted keyword search for people and topics.
The portfolio is further expanded by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation's digital library, where almost all of the foundation's publications are available in full text as PDF, EPUB or HTML files and can be accessed immediately without any restrictions.
The Archive for Social History (AfS), an internationally recognised journal published annually since 1961, also has a place on the portal: each volume deals with a specific topic and provides essays, extensive research reports and collective reviews on current trends in historiography; individual contributions are also published online.   
Finally, the portal also integrates archive material, which is divided into personal holdings, organisational holdings and collection holdings. Some holdings are already fully digitised and available in the portal. Further holdings will be added gradually. In addition, metadata for non-digitised holdings will also be implemented to enable searches in the metadata. 
Bringing these collections together in one place improves research considerably and increases the visibility of historical sources. We cordially invite you to visit the new portal and explore the wide range of collections.

 

Oer-Erkenschwick/Germany

SOZIALISTISCHE ERZIEHUNG zielt auf eine grundlegende Veränderung von Gesellschaft in der Verbindung von Pädagogischem mit Politischem. Sie war und ist nie nur Theorie, sondern stets auch Praxis: in der Gruppenstunde, auf einer Demonstration, im Zeltlager. Auf diese Weise soll idealerweise der:die Einzelne – unabhängig von Geschlecht oder Herkunft – zu einem vernunft orientierten, gerechten, mündigen Subjekt werden, das im eigenständigen politischen Denken und Handeln, solidarisch über (nationale) Grenzen hinweg, in kritischer Re exion der Machtverhältnisse und in Abwehr faschistischer und autoritärer Regime die Gesellschaft gestalten kann. Die Jahres tagung des Archivs der Arbeiterjugendbewegung nimmt in Vorträgen und Gesprächsforen die Theorie und Praxis sozialistischer Erziehung vom frühen 20. Jahrhundert bis heute kritisch in den Blick.

PROGRAMM JAHRESTAGUNG DES ARCHIVS 16. /17. JANUAR 2026

FREITAG, 16. JANUAR 2026
17:00 Uhr: Veit Dieterich (Berlin) · Moderation: Bärbel van Dawen (Köln)
                  Begrüßung und Vorstellung des Programms
17:30 Uhr: Ingrid Miethe (Gießen)
                  Sozialistische Erziehung: Anspruch – Kontroversen – Differenzierungen
18:30 Uhr: Maria Daldrup · Arne Schott (Oer-Erkenschwick)
                  »Der Mensch ist niemals fertig erzogen«. Sozialistische Erziehungspraxis in Quellen
                  aus dem Archiv der Arbeiterjugendbewegung
19:15 Uhr: Führung durch das Archiv der Arbeiterjugendbewegung
20:00 Uhr: Abendessen und Ausklang im Roten Falken

SAMSTAG, 17. JANUAR 2026
09:00 Uhr: Begrüßung
                  Veit Dieterich (Berlin)
09:15 Uhr: Bernd Dobesberger (Linz) · Wolfgang Uellenberg-van Dawen (Köln)
                  Rote-Falken-Pädagogik in Österreich und Deutschland
10:30 Uhr: Pause
10:45 Uhr: Kay Schweigmann-Greve (Hannover)
                  Mit Hordentopf und Rucksack in die Bonner Republik
11:30 Uhr: Philipp Schweizer (Erfurt)
                  Arbeit am subjektiven Faktor. Sozialistische Erziehung und Bildung in den
                  1950er Jahren
12:15 Uhr: Mittagessen
13:00 Uhr: Gudrun Probst-Eschke (Hamburg) · Hildegard Fuhrmann (Köln)
                  Auf- und Umbrüche in der Falkenpädagogik der 1960er und 1970er Jahre

SAMSTAG, 17. JANUAR 2026
13:45 Uhr: GESPRÄCHSFOREN
A Uns aus dem Elend zu erlösen, können wir nur selber tun: Sozialismus und Selbstorganisation
B Revolutionierung der Köpfe: Erziehung zum Klassenkampf
C Von Falken, Frauen und Feministinnen
    Bundesfrauenkonferenzen als Wege zur Selbstermächtigung
D Erziehung in der Gemeinschaft zur Gemeinschaft
    Pädagogik in der Gruppenarbeit
16:15 Uhr: Kaffeepause
16:45 Uhr: Aus den Gesprächsforen
17:15 Uhr: Maja Iwer (Essen) · Karina Kohn (Bochum)· Jonathan Schweizer (Erfurt)
                  Politische Erziehung heute
17:45 Uhr: Abschlussdiskussion
18:30 Uhr: Ende der Veranstaltung und Abendessen

BEGLEITPROGRAMM
LESUNG Michael Dehmlow (Berlin):
Die proletarische Faust. Autobiogra sche Erzählungen
AUSSTELLUNG Georg Hans Trapp (1900 – 1977),
Zeichner von Flossenbürg: Frühe Werke

Kontakt: archiv@arbeiterjugend.de.

Aachen/Germany   Veranstalter: Daniel Brandau / Hannes Burkhardt / Sabrina Schmitz-Zerres, Arbeitskreis „Digitalität“ der Konferenz für Geschichtsdidaktik (KGD) (RWTH Aachen University) Ausrichter: RWTH Aachen University Gefördert durch: Konferenz für Geschichtsdidaktik (KGD) PLZ: 52062 Ort: Aachen Land: Deutschland Findet statt: In Präsenz Vom - Bis: 19.03.2026 - 20.03.2026 Deadline: 05.01.2026 Website: https://www.historicum.net/kgd/der-fachverband/arbeitskreise/digitalitaet  

Der Arbeitskreis „Digitalität“ der KGD lädt zur Tagung „Algorithmische Vergangenheit? KI, Geschichtskultur und historisches Lernen“ am 19.–20. März 2026 an die RWTH Aachen ein. Im Fokus steht, wie generative KI historische Lernprozesse, Geschichtskultur und fachdidaktische Konzepte zwischen kritischer Dekonstruktion und kreativer Nutzung verändert. Eingereicht werden können pointierte Impulse als Abstract (bis 1000 Zeichen) bis 05.01.2026. Diskutiert wird auf Basis präzirkulierter Impulspapiere.

 

Algorithmische Vergangenheit? KI, Geschichtskultur und historisches Lernen. Call for Papers des Arbeitskreises „Digitalität“ der KGD

Der Arbeitskreis „Digitalität“ der Konferenz für Geschichtsdidaktik (KGD) lädt im März 2026 zu einer Tagung an der RWTH Aachen ein. Unter der Themenstellung „Algorithmische Vergangenheit? KI, Geschichtskultur und historisches Lernen“ möchten wir an aktuelle Debatten zur Kultur der Digitalität anknüpfen und fragen, wie generative und analytische KI historische Lernprozesse, Geschichtskultur und fachdidaktische Konzepte verändern – zwischen kritisch-analytischer Dekonstruktion und kreativ-produktiver Nutzung. Dabei interessiert uns die Rolle von Daten, Algorithmen und Plattformlogiken ebenso wie Fragen der Verantwortung, Bewertung und Teilhabe.

Die Tagung findet auf der Basis von präzirkulierten Impulspapieren statt: kurze, pointierte Stellungnahmen, die vorab an alle Teilnehmenden versandt, aber nicht vorgetragen werden, dienen als Grundlage der Diskussion. Gebündelte Kommentare eröffnen die Gesprächsrunden.

Leitfragen
Wir begrüßen theoretische, empirische und praxisnahe Beiträge u. a. zu folgenden Fragen, gerne mit Bezug auf Schulen, Hochschulen, Museen, Gedenkstätten und digitale Öffentlichkeiten:
- Geschichtskultur & Algorithmizität: Wie prägen Plattformlogiken und algorithmische Sichtbarkeit (z. B. TikTok, Instagram) die Produktion, Reichweite sowie Deutung historischer Narrative und welche Kompetenzen braucht deren Dekonstruktion?
- Kultur der Digitalität & Data Literacy: Welche Datenpraktiken (Sammeln, Kuratieren, Modellieren) werden für historisches Lernen relevant und wie lässt sich Data Literacy fachspezifisch konturieren?
- Ko-Konstruktion Mensch–Maschine: Inwiefern entstehen KI-gestützte historische Darstellungen als Ko-Konstruktionen zwischen Sinnbildung und Wahrscheinlichkeitsbildung und was folgt daraus für zentrale fachdidaktische Konzepte wie Geschichtsbewusstsein und Geschichtskultur?
- Kritisch-analytisch & kreativ-produktiv: Wie können Lernende KI-Ausgaben triftigkeitsorientiert analysieren (Dekonstruktion, Quellenbezug, Perspektivität) und zugleich KI sinnvoll für Fragestellungen, Entwürfe und Prototypen nutzen (Prompt-gestützte Fragekompetenz)?
- Feedback und Bewerten mit KI: Welche Chancen/Grenzen zeigen sich bei KI-gestütztem Feedback und der (Teil-)Automatisierung von Bewertung im Lichte von Volatilität, Bias, Halluzinationen und normativen Anforderungen (z. B. Umgang mit geschichtsrevisionistischen Aussagen)?
- Formate jenseits des Klassenzimmers: Wie verändert KI Angebote in Museen und Archiven sowie Public-History-Formate (z. B. Chatbots als „historische Personen“, HTR/NER/Topic Modelling) und welche didaktischen Leitplanken sind nötig?

Einreichung & Format

Abstract (max. 1000 Zeichen inkl. Leerzeichen) zum Themenvorschlag als PDF-Datei; inkl. Titel, Kurzvita (2–3 Zeilen), Institution, Kontaktangaben

Frist: 05.01.2026

E-Mail an Hannes.Burkhardt@uni-flensburg.de

CfP: https://eufbox.uni-flensburg.de/index.php/s/JFWkqnMz7gtxHMJ

Die Auswahl und Bündelung der Beiträge erfolgen durch die Leitung des AK. Wir behalten uns thematische Cluster und Kommentarpatenschaften vor. Bis zum 15.01.2026 erfolgt eine Rückmeldung zu den eingereichten Abstracts.

Im Fall der Annahme des Beitrags bitten wir um ein Impulspapier (max. 10.000 Zeichen inkl. Leerzeichen) mit klarer These und skizzierter Anschlussfrage für die Diskussion bis zum 28.02.2026.

Die Impulspapiere sind Grundlage für die Diskussion und werden vor der Tagung allen Teilnehmer:innen zur Verfügung gestellt.

Tagungsmodalitäten
Ort/Termin: RWTH Aachen University, 19.–20. März 2026
Teilnahme: Es wird keine Gebühr erhoben.
Reisekosten: Für Nachwuchswissenschaftler:innen können in begrenztem Umfang Zuschüsse gewährt werden (nach Antrag; Details folgen mit der Zusage).
Publikation: Wir streben einen Sammelband auf Basis weiterentwickelter Impulse an (Näheres nach der Tagung).

Kontakt

Hannes.Burkhardt@uni-flensburg.de

Frankfurt am Main/Germany

Organiser: Hugo Sinzheimer Institut für Arbeits- und Sozialrecht, Max-Planck-Institut für Rechtsgeschichte und Rechtstheorie, Prof. Dr. Daniel Hlava (FRA-UAS)
Location: Frankfurt am Main, Max-Planck-Institut für Rechtsgeschichte und Rechtstheorie
Date: 12.12.2025

Hugo Sinzheimer, pioneer of labour law, was born on 12 April 1875. Numerous tributes, publications and events have already taken place to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth (see, among others: 150 Jahre Hugo Sinzheimer - Hugo Sinzheimer Institut für Arbeits- und Sozialrecht).
The “Initiative Arbeitsrechtsgeschichte” would like to round off the Sinzheimer Year with an annual confrence focusing on the international significance and reception of Sinzheimer's work.
To this end, we have been able to engage six renowned scholars from five different countries who will address the topic from different perspectives.
In order to enable international participation in the conference, it will be simultaneously interpreted (German/English) and will take place both in person and digitally. Participation is free of charge.
Food and drinks will be provided on site. Please indicate when registering if you have any special requirements in this regard.
The link for online participation will be sent shortly before the event.

Please register by 5 December 2025 at the latest using the following link: https://forms.office.com/e/nL2jAZYkFh 

Die Initiative Arbeitsrechtsgeschichte ist eine Kooperation des Max-Planck-Instituts für Rechtsgeschichte und Rechtstheorie und des Hugo Sinzheimer Instituts für Arbeits- und Sozialrecht in Zusammenarbeit mit Prof. Dr. Daniel Hlava (FRA-UAS)

Programme

09:15: Arrival and welcome
09:30: Introduction
           PD Dr. Thomas Pierson (Justus Liebig University Giessen)
09:45: Welcome address
           Prof. Stefan Vogenauer (Managing Director of the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory)
10:00: Emergence of law: Sinzheimer’s sociological approach
           Dr. Robert Knegt (University of Amsterdam)
11:00: Sinzheimer's influence in the UK
           Prof. Dr. Ruth Dukes (University of Glasgow)
12:00: Lunch break
13:00: Sinzheimer and Japan
           Prof. Dr. Naoko Matsumoto (Sophia University Tokio)
14:00: Hugo Sinzheimer and the construction of collective autonomy und trade union law in Italy
           Prof. Dr. Paolo Passaniti (University of Siena)
15:00: Coffee break
15:15: Economic democracy according to Sidney and Beatrice Webb and Hugo Sinzheimer. A comparison
           Dr. Johanna Wolf (Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory)
           Prof. Dr. Rebecca Zahn (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow)
16:15: Farewell

by Lucas Poy and Hannes Rolf

Since the nineteenth century, working-class families have predominantly relied on tenements for housing, with rents often consuming a large portion of their household budgets. There is a long and contested history of tenants taking collective action across time and in many contexts, including their involvement in rent strikes, but international comparisons have been scarce. Rent Strikes: A history of collective tenant actions across the world is a collaborative effort by 16 contributors from diverse countries to identify common patterns and global trajectories in the rich history of tenants’ strikes, spanning a period of almost 120 years from the early twentieth century to the Covid-19 pandemic. It brings together local, national and comparative case studies to illustrate the history of tenant mobilisation for the general public, connecting with existing scholarship and laying the groundwork for future research. Adopting a transnational perspective, it examines episodes of tenant struggles in North and Latin America, Northern and Southern Europe, and Oceania. In doing so, the book explores a range of actions, including petitions, demonstrations, boycotts and legal actions, and has a special focus on the part played by women in these movements. The contributors examine the role of ethnic, national and gender differences between tenants and landlords, while situating their studies within a broader historical context and addressing the larger questions posed in the first chapter.

 

Download Open Access PDF 

 

Table of Contents

 

1 Rent contention throughout history and across borders
Lucas Poy and Hannes Rolf

 

2 Rent strikes, tenant organising and the cultural politics of inflation in the post-First World War United States
Mark W. Robbins

 

3 Shop strike! Rent control, moral economy and tenants’ mobilisation in Athens, 1914-1936
Nikos Potamianos

 

4 Women’s activism, trade union hesitancy and state repression in the 1907 tenant strike in Buenos Aires
Lucas Poy and Alejandro Belkin

 

5 The left, the labour movement and Afro-Caribbean migrants in the Panama tenant strikes of 1925 and 1932
Jacob A. Zumoff

 

6 The Swedish rent model: collective bargaining and the institutionalisation of rent struggle in post-war Sweden
Hannes Rolf

 

7 ‘Autogestion des luttes’: immigrant rent strikes in France, 1975–1980
Nathan Crompton

 

8 The Leiden rent strikes of the 1970s: national politics, Middletown Maoism and the rise of the Socialist Party in the Netherlands
Bart van der Steen

 

9 West Berlin’s tenants’ movement and the crisis of the Fordist city in the 1970s
Lisa Vollmer

 

10 Women’s experience of housing struggles in Harlem and Magliana through autobiographical narratives
Giulia Novaro and Eugenia Crosetti

 

11 ‘Watch out sharks!’ Mobilisations against the rental market in the favelas of Belo Horizonte (Brazil) in the early 1960s
Samuel Oliveira and Philippe Urvoy

 

12 A century of renter activism in Aotearoa New Zealand
Elinor Chisholm

 

13 Lockdown tenants: household resistance against rentier capital during the 2020 rent strike in Spain
Marta Ill-Raga and Jordi Bonshoms-Guzmán

 

14 Conclusion
Lucas Poy and Hannes Rolf

 

About the Editors

• Lucas Poy is a social and labour historian specializing in the history of social democracy and the labour movement. He is an Assistant Professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and a fellow at the International Institute of Social History.
• Hannes Rolf is an urban, social, and labour historian specializing in the history of the labour and cooperative movements and housing. He is an assistant professor at the Institute of Urban History, Stockholm University.

Series: Work Around the World edited by the International Institute of Social History

Format: Open Access PDF / Paperback

Organiser: DFG-Forschungsgruppe Freiwilligkeit, Teilprojekt Rückmigration, Florian Wagner Location: Universität Erfurt Funded by: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Ernst-Abbe-Stiftung Jena, Universität Erfurt Postcode: 99089 City: Erfurt Country: Germany Event format: Hybrid format Dates: 01.12.2025 - 02.12.2025  

How far can we really call colonial migration to and from Europe voluntary? When millions from the colonies were pulled into European armies and labor forces during the World Wars? When Africans and Asians went to Europe to fight or join fascist movements? When students and labor migrants arrived after 1945 under unequal terms? This conference sketches out indigenous agency by probing what ‘voluntariness’ means in subaltern (return) migration across and beyond colonial empires.

Between Choice and Command: Migration and Return Across and Beyond Colonial Empires, 1900-1960

This conference sketches out indigenous agency by probing what ‘voluntariness’ means in subaltern (return) migration across and beyond colonial empires.

Programme

Monday, December 1st, 9:00 am-7:00 pm, Senatssaal, University of Erfurt

9.00-9:30 am: Welcome and Introduction

Section 1: Chair: Silvan Niedermeier (Erfurt)

9:30-10:30 am: Anindita Bhattacharya (Maynooth): Imperial Anxieties, Post-war Provisions and Growing Discontent: A history of Indian veterans of the First World War

10:30-11:30 am: Baijayanti Roy (Frankfurt): Return, Repatriation or Flight? Destinies of Indian anti-colonialists in Nazi Germany and thereafter

12:00-1:00 pm: Ronald Hirte (Weimar/Buchenwald): Entangled Systems of Coercion: Deportees from Colonial Contexts in Buchenwald

Section 2: Chair: Gifty Nyame Tabiri (Erfurt)

2:00-3:00 pm: Elise Mazurié (Freiburg): Changing Categorisations from the Interwar through National Socialism to the Post-War: The reparation claim of a Moroccan soldier against the Federal Republic of Germany

3:00-4:00 pm: Gisela Ewe (Hamburg): Between Defiance and Alliance: Negotiating resistance, solidarity and political strategy in Hamburgs’s (post-)colonial context

4:00-5:00 pm: Nicola Camilleri (Maynooth): From Ethiopia to Italy and Back: a family history of Italian colonialism

5:30-7:00 pm Public Keynote Lecture:
Dónal Hassett (Maynooth): The Great War of Movement: Thinking Critically about mobility, displacement, coercion and consent in the French Empire's First World War

Tuesday, December 2nd, 9 – 12:30, Forschungsbau Weltbeziehungen, University of Erfurt

Section 3: Chair: Patrice Poutrus (Berlin)

9:00-10:00 am Lena Engel (Erfurt/Florence): Women's Mobility in Entangled Systems of Coercion: The trajectories of Taous Merouane between (post)colonial Algeria, France and Buchenwald concentration camp

10:00-11:00 am Mathilde von Bülow (St: Andrews): Algerian Migration to West and East Germany during the War of Independence

11:00-12:00 am: Jan Schubert (Florence): Labour Migrants' Agency towards Return Migration and Their Dealing with Deportability in the GDR: Oral History of Algerian Labour Migration to Socialist Germany

12-12:15 pm Final Discussion

Contact

Anmeldung und Registrierung: florian.wagner@uni-erfurt.de

At this international one-day conference, experts will discuss their latest research findings about the historical and current role of fascist and nationalistic-oriented women from the interwar period to the present day.

Between Past and Present. Continuities of Right-Wing Extremist Images of Womanhood

At this international one-day conference, experts will discuss their latest research findings about the historical and current role of fascist and nationalistic-oriented women from the interwar period to the present day. In light of the shift to the right in many European countries and elsewhere, it will be shown how antifeminist politics, traditional images of womanhood and right-wing ideologies have shaped society until today.

The conference is part of the international EU project “Teaching about Race and Gender Exclusion Timelines.”

Programme

11:00 Welcome speeches

PD Dr. Werner Treß (Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies)

Nataša Popović (Centre for Promotion of Tolerance and Holocaust Remembrance)

11:15 – 12:00 Keynote

Moderation: Dr. Martina Bitunjac (Moses Mendelssohn Center for European Jewish-Studies)

PD Dr. Ljiljana Radonić (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Female Perpetrators and their Antisemitic, Racist and Antiziganist Authoritarian Projections

12:00 – 12:15 Coffee break

12:15 – 13:15 Panel I

Moderation: Dr. Olaf Glöckner (Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies)

Prof. Dr. Esther Lehnert (Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences Berlin)
Women in the Far Right: Fighting for Women’s Rights?

Prof. Dr. Perry Willson (University of Dundee)
The Political Mobilisation of Women in Fascist Italy: 1922–1943

13:15 – 14:30 Lunch

14:30 – 15:30 Panel II

Moderation: Dr. Roy Knocke (Lepsiushaus Potsdam)

Dr. Anca Diana Axinia (Independent Scholar)
Women, Gender, and Politics in the Romanian Legionary Movement

Dr. Martina Bitunjac (Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies)
Women, the Ustaša and the Right Movement in Croatia and in the Diaspora

15:30 – 15:45 Coffee break

15:45 – 16:45 Panel III

Moderation: Prof. Dr. Alexandru-Florin Platon („Alexandru Ioan Cuza“ University of Iași)

Dr. habil. Urszula Markowska-Manista (University of Warsaw)
Sensitive Knowledge and Multiple Narratives in Intertwined Contexts: Women in Poland

Dr. Olena Petrenko (University of Bochum)
Gender and Nationalism: The Role of Women in the Ukrainian Nationalist Movement

16:45 – 17:00 Coffee break

17:00 – 18:00 Panel IV

Moderation: Dr. habil. Urszula Markowska-Manista (University of Warsaw)

Prof. Dr. Julie V. Gottlieb (University of Sheffield)
Continuities, Changes and the (Re)presentation of Women in Extreme-Right Politics in Britain, 1923 to the Present

Dr. Benjamin Zachariah (Einstein Forum)
Nationalism, the Volk, and Women’s ‘Agency’: The Case of India

18:00 Closing remarks

Contact

Dr. Martina Bitunjac
Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum für europäisch-jüdische Studien
E-Mail: mbitunja@uni-potsdam.de

Lisbon/Portugal

Ce colloque pluridisciplinaire propose d’éclairer la place de la musique dans les différentes expériences de l’exil et d’étudier l’impact de l’exil sur la création et la production musicales – que ce soit dans des contextes de répression politique ou de conflits armés. Quelles formes d’interactions / négociations esthétiques, politiques et biographiques complexes marquent les récits de l’exil ? Partant du cas de l’exil des Portugais en France durant la dictature de l’Estado novo (1933-1974), il s’ouvrira à différentes aires chronologiques et géographiques, avec pour principal objectif de contribuer à cartographier les recherches actuelles sur le sujet.

Présentation

Le projet EXIMUS – « ’É preciso avisar toda a gente’ : Música e exílio em França durante o regime do Estado Novo (1933-1974) » (1933-1974), financé par la FCT (DOI 2022.05129. PTDC) – lance un appel à communications pour le colloque international « Musique et exil », qui aura lieu à la Faculté des sciences sociales et humaines de l’Universidade Nova de Lisbonne (Colégio Almada Negreiros), du 21 au 23 mai 2026.

Argumentaire

L’impact de l’expérience de l’exil, des déplacements forcés d’individus et de populations sur la création et la production musicales – que ce soit dans des contextes de répression politique ou de conflits armés – fait l’objet d’une attention croissante au sein de la musicologie, de l’ethnomusicologie et de l’histoire culturelle. Il existe une abondante littérature sur la figure « nostalgique et sentimentale » de l’exilé (Said, 1993), ainsi que sur la « condition de duplicité » inhérente à l’expérience de l’exil et ses conséquences sur la création musicale (Goerh, 1999). De nombreux travaux se sont notamment penchés sur l’ « émigration musicale » depuis l’Europe centrale vers les Etats-Unis durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Barilier, 2018). L’étude des récits de l’exil musical ont ainsi conduit à identifier des processus de « transplantation » ou d’« acculturation » – à travers les expériences contrastées d’Arnold Schoenberg et de Kurt Weill aux Etats‑Unis, le premier étant marqué par l’isolement artistique, le second incarnant l’exemple d’une adaptation réussie –, mais aussi des formes de négociations esthétiques, politiques et biographiques complexes dans les « récits du retour » (Moreda, 2016).

Organisé au moment du centenaire du coup d’État du 28 mai 1926, qui a marqué le début de la Dictature militaire au Portugal et du plus long régime autoritaire en Europe, ce congrès international a pour objectif principal de contribuer à cartographier les recherches actuelles sur le sujet, portant sur différentes aires chronologiques et géographiques. Son approche pluridisciplinaire permettra de mettre en évidence la diversité des expériences des musiciens exilés, émigrés ou réfugiés, à l’échelle internationale.

Le comité scientifique encourage la soumission de propositions autour d’un large éventail de thèmes de recherche :

• Spécificités de l’activité musicale en contexte d’exil ;
• Musique, résistance et activité politique dans l’exil ;
• Musique, liberté d’expression et répression politique en contexte d’exil ;
• Internationalisme, anticolonialisme, antiracisme et mouvements de libération ;
• Mouvements féministes et représentativité de genres dans la production musicale en contexte d’exil ;
• Relations des musiciens exilés avec les réseaux associatifs, institutionnels et politiques des pays d’accueil ;
• Interactions stylistiques et linguistiques dans la création musicale en exil : entre les musiciens exilés originaires de différents pays, et avec les musiciens du pays d’accueil ;
• Liens entre la musique produite en contexte d’exil et les autres arts (théâtre, cinéma, danse, entre autres) ;
• Liens des musiciens exilés avec les différentes industries de l’activité musicale (industrie phonographique, spectacle, etc.) ;
• Amateurisme et professionnalisme – statut des musiciens en exil ;
• Retour dans leur pays d’origine des musiciens exilés ;
• Place de la musique dans les différents récits de l’exil, incluant la notion d’« exil intérieur » ;
• Place de la musique dans la préservation de la mémoire de l’exil (associations, commémorations, initiatives pédagogiques) ;
• Défis posés par la patrimonialisation de la mémoire de l’exil (archives, centres de documentation, musées, festivals).

Modalités de soumission

Langues de travail du colloque : portugais, anglais, français et espagnol.

Les propositions de communication doivent être envoyées au format Word, à l’adresse eximusconference@gmail.com,

avant le 15 janvier 2026,

Elles devront comporter les éléments suivants :

• Le titre de la communication
• Un résumé de 3 000 caractères maximum (espaces compris)
• Une courte biographie de 1 500 caractères maximum (espaces compris).

Les propositions acceptées seront communiquées par e-mail avant le 6 février 2026.

Pour plus d’informations, veuillez contacter : eximusconference@gmail.com

Informations utiles

Le colloque accueillera comme keynotes :

• Anthony Seeger, anthropologue et ethnomusicologue, professeur émérite au département d’ethnomusicologie de l’université de Californie à Los Angeles (États-Unis). Entre 1988 et 2000, il a été directeur de la Smithsonian Folkways Recordings au Smithsonian Institute. Il est l’auteur de Why Suyá Sing: A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian People (Cambridge University Press, 1987) et il a codirigé Archives for the Future: Global Perspectives on Audiovisual Archives in the 21st Century (Seagull Books, 2004). Ses nombreuses publications traitent de la musique et de la vie sociale des Indiens Kisedje du Brésil, de la musique folk américaine, des questions relatives aux droits humains et à la terre des populations autochtones, de l’archivistique, de la propriété intellectuelle, du patrimoine culturel immatériel, ainsi que de questions théoriques et méthodologiques en ethnomusicologie.
• Florian Scheding, musicologue et historien de la culture, actuellement directeur de l’Education à la School of Arts de l’université de Bristol. Son champ de recherche principal porte sur les relations entre musique et migration, avec un accent particulier sur le déplacement et l’exil des musiciens européens au cours du XXe siècle. Il a publié plusieurs articles sur la musique et la migration sous ses multiples formes, couvrant les répertoires fonctionnels, populaires et savants. Il a codirigé, avec Erik Levi, l’ouvrage Music and Displacement: Diasporas, Mobilities and Dislocations in Europe and Beyond (Scarecrow Press, 2010) et il est l’auteur de Musical Journeys: Performing Migration in 20th-century Music (Boydell & Brewer, 2019).

Comité scientifique

• Cristina Clímaco (Université Paris 8/Vincennes Saint Denis)
• Graça dos Santos (Université Paris Nanterre)
• João Madeira (IHC/NOVA FCSH)
• Manuel Deniz Silva (INET-md/NOVA FSCH)
• Mário Vieira de Carvalho (CESEM/NOVA FCSH)
• Miguel Cardina (CES/UC)
• Salwa Castelo Branco (INET-md/NOVA FSCH)
• Victor Pereira (IHC/NOVA FCSH)
• Ricardo Andrade (INET-md/NOVA FSCH)
• Hugo Castro (INET-md/NOVA FSCH)
• Agnès Pellerin (INET-md/NOVA FSCH)

Comité d’organisation

• Agnès Pellerin (INET-md/NOVA FSCH)
• Hugo Castro (INET-md/NOVA FCSH)
• João Madeira (IHC/NOVA FCSH)
• Manuel Deniz Silva (INET-md/NOVA FCSH)
• Ricardo Andrade (INET-md/NOVA FCSH)
• Victor Pereira (IHC/NOVA FCSH)

Ce colloque est financé par les fonds portugais de la FCT Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., dans le cadre du projet EXIMUS « ’É preciso avisar toda a gente’: Música e exílio em França durante o regime do Estado Novo (1933-1974) » (DOI 2022.05129.PTDC) et de l’INET-md, Instituto de Etnomusicologia - Centro de estudos em Música e Dança (DOI: 10.54499/UIDB/00472/2020).

Ce numéro de Moussons propose d’interroger ensemble les rapports sociaux de sexe, les mobilisations féministes et les politiques de promotion des droits des femmes et des minorités de genre en Asie du Sud-Est, en explorant leurs traductions, leurs tensions et leurs effets à différentes échelles. Il entend contribuer à une lecture décoloniale et située des politiques de genre en Asie du Sud-Est, en portant une attention particulière aux interactions entre dynamiques globales et ancrages locaux, entre institutions normatives et mobilisations collectives, entre héritages coloniaux et transformations contemporaines. Il vise à valoriser la pluralité des voix et des épistémologies féministes et des minorités de genre de la région, en soutenant la traduction et la circulation de travaux issus des langues vernaculaires d’Asie du Sud-Est vers le français ou l’anglais, afin de favoriser une mise en dialogue inclusive.

Argumentaire

La conférence mondiale sur les femmes de Pékin en 1995 a marqué un tournant pour les mouvements féministes en Asie du Sud-Est. La participation active d’associations féministes de la région y a favorisé l’émergence de réseaux transnationaux et la diffusion de nouvelles catégories d’action publique autour du gender mainstreaming (intégration de la dimension de genre). L’écho de cet événement s’est traduit par une institutionnalisation progressive des enjeux de genre au sein des politiques publiques et du secteur associatif : création de ministères ou d’unités dédiées à la promotion des femmes, intégration du genre dans les programmes de développement, et reconnaissance accrue des organisations féminines comme interlocutrices légitimes des États et des bailleurs internationaux. Si les décennies ont largement suscité des études en ce domaine, notamment sous l’angle de la diffusion et de la standardisation des politiques de genre, les transformations plus contemporaines, marquées par la reconfiguration des féminismes, la montée de nouveaux acteurs et les tensions demeurent encore peu documentées.

Ce numéro de Moussons propose d’interroger ensemble les rapports sociaux de sexe, les mobilisations féministes et les politiques de promotion des droits des femmes et des minorités de genre en Asie du Sud-Est, en explorant leurs traductions, leurs tensions et leurs effets à différentes échelles.

Il s’agira d’explorer les configurations du genre dans la région, à travers des enquêtes empiriques, des analyses théoriques et des réflexions comparatives. Une attention particulière sera accordée aux formes de division socio-sexuée du travail et à ses métamorphoses, qu’elles concernent les sphères domestique, productive ou reproductive, les migrations, ou encore les économies informelles et transnationales. Quelles grilles d’intelligibilité du genre prévalent dans différents contextes historiques et politiques, et comment participent-elles à la production – ou à la contestation – des normes sociales ? Qu’elles soient héritières d’histoires localisées, importées par des institutions religieuses, étatiques ou internationales, comment ces normes entrent-elles en contradiction selon les configurations de pouvoir et les périodes considérées ?

Les propositions pourront également porter sur l’examen critique des politiques publiques et des dispositifs internationaux de promotion des droits des femmes et des minorités de genre, ainsi que sur leurs effets concrets au niveau local : appropriations, résistances, détournements ou reconfigurations. Comment les normes internationales issues des conférences onusiennes, des conventions ou des agendas de développement sont négociées et éventuellement contestées dans des contextes marqués par la pluralité religieuse, les héritages coloniaux, les nationalismes et les transformations socio-économiques contemporaines ? Loin d’adopter une approche homogénéisante de la « globalisation du genre », ce numéro entend rendre compte des dynamismes contradictoires qui accompagnent la mise en œuvre des politiques du genre en Asie du Sud-Est. Il permettra d’explorer les tensions entre universalisation des droits et ancrages locaux, entre professionnalisation du militantisme et maintien d’espaces critiques féministes, entre dépendance institutionnelle et réappropriation stratégique.

Les contributions pourront aborder, entre autres, la fabrique institutionnelle des politiques d’égalité (plans d’action nationaux, ministères, agences internationales) et leurs logiques de mise en œuvre ; les formes de traduction et de vernacularisation du genre dans les contextes religieux, coutumiers ou communautaires ; les dynamiques de professionnalisation, d’expertise et d’ONGisation du militantisme féministe et LGBTQ+ ; les formes de résistance, d’adaptation ou de réinvention portées par les actrices et acteurs locaux face aux cadres internationaux.

Ce numéro entend contribuer à une lecture décoloniale et située des politiques de genre en Asie du Sud-Est, en portant une attention particulière aux interactions entre dynamiques globales et ancrages locaux, entre institutions normatives et mobilisations collectives, entre héritages coloniaux et transformations contemporaines. Il vise à valoriser la pluralité des voix et des épistémologies féministes et des minorités de genre de la région, en soutenant la traduction et la circulation de travaux issus des langues vernaculaires d’Asie du Sud-Est vers le français ou l’anglais, afin de favoriser une mise en dialogue inclusive.

Ce numéro thématique de Moussons accueille des contributions issues de l’ensemble des sciences humaines et sociales (anthropologie, sociologie, histoire, science politique, études de genre, etc.).

Modalités de contribution

Les propositions de contribution se feront sous la forme d’un texte de 750 à 1 000 mots. Elles devront comporter un titre, un résumé et une brève présentation de l’auteur·trice.

Les propositions de contribution sont à envoyer par courriel conjointement à Estelle Miramond et Samia Kotele aux adresses e-mails suivantes : estelle.miramond@u-paris.fr et kotelesamia@gmail.com,

avant le 8 janvier 2025.

En cas de réponse favorable (avant le 9 février), les articles complets seront à envoyer pour le 15 juin 2026.

Le format attendu est de 35 000 à 75 000 signes maximum (notes de bas de page et espaces comprises).

Les contributions en anglais sont les bienvenues.

Pour plus d’informations et avant soumission, merci de consulter la rubrique des conseils aux auteurs de la revue Moussons

Les articles seront relus par les responsables scientifiques et un ou plusieurs membres du comité éditorial avant d’être évalués selon le processus habituel de double évaluation externe et anonyme. La parution du numéro est prévue en juin 2027.

Responsables scientifiques

• Estelle Miramond (LCSP-UPC)
• Samia Kotele (ENS Lyon-IAO)

Biographie des responsables scientifiques

Estelle Miramond est maîtresse de conférences en sociologie (LCSP-IHSS) et co-directrice du Centre d’enseignement, de documentation et de recherches en études féministes (CEDREF) à l’université Paris Cité. Ses recherches concernent les questions de migrations, sexualités, travail et exploitation. Après avoir étudié les politiques de lutte contre la traite des femmes entre le Laos et la Thaïlande, elle travaille désormais sur la bioéconomie de la reproduction.

Samia Kotele est docteure en histoire de l’École normale supérieure (ENS) de Lyon. Ses recherches portent sur l’histoire intellectuelle et sociale des femmes oulémas indonésiennes, en mobilisant l’histoire des concepts, l’ethnographie collaborative et des enquêtes archivistiques transrégionales. Ses intérêts de recherche incluent également la réforme islamique, les formes d’autorité genrée et les méthodologies féministes et décoloniales en Asie du Sud-Est.

Paris/France

Cette journée d’étude s’inscrit dans la continuité des recherches féministes sur l’histoire de l’architecture et de l’espace, qui, depuis la deuxième partie du XXe siècle, interrogent les effets du patriarcat sur la production et les récits architecturaux. Elle vise à prolonger ces travaux en s’intéressant au contexte français du long XIXe siècle (1789-1914). L’objectif est de cartographier les discours féminins et féministes sur l’environnement construit diffusés dans la presse et l’édition en France. Cette approche entend révéler les réseaux, les supports et les thématiques portés par les autrices, tout en replaçant la France dans un cadre de réflexion transnational. Nous souhaitons accueillir des propositions émanant d’horizons disciplinaires variés, au-delà du champ de l’architecture.

Argumentaire

Depuis les années 1970, des architectes, historien·ne·s féministes écrivent une histoire des villes, de l’architecture et de l’habitat à travers le prisme du genre, pour reconstruire une histoire des femmes qui pensent l’espace. Ces recherches se sont révélées fondamentales non seulement pour écrire l’histoire des femmes, mais surtout pour écrire une nouvelle histoire (Thébaud 1998). Par ces recherches, le genre devient une « catégorie utile d’analyse historique » (Scott 1988) à part entière qui engage la décomposition des effets d’une société patriarcale sur la construction de récits architecturaux.

Cette journée d’étude s’inscrit dans une histoire transnationale qui a déjà été menée notamment aux États-Unis sur les « féministes matérielles » (Hayden 1981/2023) mais aussi en prenant en compte le travail des femmes architectes en général et non pas en se concentrant sur les exceptions connues (Torre 1977). C’est dans le souci de déplier les différents dispositifs spatiaux, les dynamiques genrées au sein de la profession et la reconfiguration critique de l’histoire de l’architecture prenant en compte les voix des femmes et les questionnements portés par les mouvements féministes qu’une large littérature s’est développée. Si cette dernière est à prédominance anglo-américaine, de nombreux mouvements, projets et figures ont été étudiés à l’international, on pense en particulier à l’Allemagne (Uhlig 1981 ; Terlinden, von Oertzen 2006), au Danemark (Vestbro 1982), aux Pays-Bas (Novas Ferradas 2023, 2024), et à la Belgique (Vranken 2018).

En France, l’histoire de l’architecture au féminin a été précédée par une vague de travaux de sociologues sur les enjeux liés à la féminisation de la formation et de la profession d’architecte en France (Chadoin 1998 et 2002 ; Lapeyre 2003). Elle s’est d’abord concentrée sur les pionnières, dans une logique de rattrapage après des décennies d’historiographie ayant globalement invisibilisé les femmes architectes. Deux grands axes se détachent : celui la féminisation des études d’architecture et de la profession depuis la fin du XIXe siècle (Diener 2013 ; Giaquinto 2016 ; Girard et Ringon 2019 ; Bouysse-Mesnage 2022 et 2023a), porté par le programme de recherche sur l’histoire de l’enseignement de l’architecture en France au XXe siècle (HENSA20), et celui de leur apport à la production théorique et construite française, principalement moderniste (Koering 2016, 2018 et 2023 ; Bouysse-Mesnage et al., 2023b ; Mittmann 2023a et 2023b). Cette dynamique s’est élargie parallèlement à l’histoire de la critique d’architecture au féminin, à laquelle sont consacrés depuis quelques années programmes (Barbut et Kramer-Mallordy) et travaux de recherche (Knockaert, en cours), événements scientifiques (Châtelet, Jannière, Scrivano 2023) et expositions (Szacka 2025). Cette dynamique s’est néanmoins concentrée sur le XXe siècle et sur quelques figures majeures de la critique d’architecture et d’urbanisme au féminin, françaises (Marie Dormoy, Françoise Choay) ou nord-américaines (Ada Louise Huxtable, Phyllis Lambert, et la critique féministe américaine).

Aussi important soit-il, ce rattrapage en cours n’a pas encore permis de répondre à une question pourtant cruciale : « Comment écrire [...] des histoires féministes de l’architecture sans femmes architectes ? » (Hultzsch 2022). La traduction en français et la publication récentes de textes charnières, principalement issus de la scène anglo-américaine, ayant abordé entre les années 1970 et 1990 une histoire de l’architecture prenant en compte plus largement l’apport des femmes et des mouvements féministes (Dadour 2022 ; Hayden 1981/2023), ont réactivé l’héritage de l’ouvrage pionnier sur l’histoire et l’actualité des utopies féministes (Denèfle 2009). Une thèse en cours autour de projets architecturaux féministes qui pensent la socialisation du travail domestique (Jonville, en cours) confirme ce regain d’intérêt pour une histoire féministe de l’architecture, complémentaire d’une histoire des femmes architectes (Bastoen 2024 ; Thibault 2014).

Un programme de recherche en cours, intitulé Women Writing Architecture: Female Experiences of the Built 1700-1900 et piloté par Anne Hultzsch depuis l’ETH Zurich, cherche à explorer la production discursive féminine sur l’architecture en évitant l’écueil de la survalorisation de l’individu concepteur (Willis 1998) : « L’écriture et la publication ont historiquement offert (et offrent encore souvent aujourd’hui) un espace aux femmes, et à d’autres groupes marginalisés, pour parler d’une voix publique, pour être entendus, pour pratiquer. Elles ont créé des réseaux intellectuels et des discours qui ont façonné la manière dont les bâtiments sont perçus, produits, compris et utilisés » (Hultzsch 2022). La France occupe néanmoins une position marginale parmi les terrains d’étude de la cinquantaine de chercheurs et chercheuses impliqués dans ce programme.

Notre ambition est donc de cartographier les recherches en cours sur les discours féminins et féministes sur l’environnement construit et paysager dans les presses généraliste, féminine et féministe et l’édition en France, dans le long XIXe siècle (1789-1914). Les contributions pourront attacher une attention particulière aux formes, supports, thématiques et dimension intertextuelle des discours ; aux trajectoires, stratégies auctoriales et réseaux des autrices ; à la réception de leurs discours, tout en replaçant la France dans un cadre de réflexion transnational.

Modalités de contribution

La participation prendra la forme d’une communication de 20 min pour les chercheur.se.s et les doctorant.e.s et une session sera dédiée aux étudiant.e.s de master sous un format Pecha Kucha (20 diapositives toutes les 20 secondes pour une présentation totale de 6 min 40).

Les propositions (titre + résumé de 300 mots maximum) sont à envoyer à julien.bastoen@paris-belleville.archi.fr et juliettejonville@gmail.com,

avant le 5 janvier 2026 au plus tard. Calendrier

• Lancement appel à communication : mi-novembre 2025
• Date butoir pour l’envoi des propositions : 5 janvier 2026
• Réponse aux intervenant·e·s retenu·e·s : fin janvier 2026

Comité d’organisation

• Julien Bastoen, maître de conférences en histoire et cultures architecturales, ENSA Paris-Belleville, chercheur IPRAUS
• Juliette Jonville, doctorante en architecture, Université Gustave Eiffel, IPRAUS

Comité scientifique

• Lucie Barette, autrice, chercheuse en langue et littérature françaises, Laslar UR4256/Normandie Université
• Julien Bastoen, maître de conférences en histoire et cultures architecturales, ENSA Paris-Belleville, chercheur IPRAUS
• Stéphanie Dadour, maîtresse de conférences en histoire et cultures architecturales, ENSA Paris-Malaquais, chercheuse ACS
• Hélène Jannière, professeure HDR en histoire de l’architecture contemporaine, université Rennes 2, directrice de l’unité de recherche Histoire et critique des arts
• Juliette Jonville, doctorante en architecture, université Gustave Eiffel, IPRAUS
• Laetitia Overney, professeure HDR en sociologie, université Le Havre-Normandie, chercheuse Identité et Différenciation de l’Espace, de l’Environnement et des Sociétés (UMR CNRS 6266)
• Estelle Thibault, professeure HDR en histoire et cultures architecturales, ENSA Paris-Belleville, chercheuse IPRAUS

Bonn/Germany

Organiser: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte (Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung) Host: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Postcode: 53175 Takes place: In attendance:  Dates: 25.06.2026 - 26.06.2026 Deadline: 15.01.2026 Website: https://www.fes.de/afs

In recent years, rural societies have become the focus of media coverage. In France, Germany and the Netherlands, farmers have demonstrated against government agricultural policy, falling prices for agricultural products, neglect of infrastructure and ignorance of the needs of rural populations by driving tractor convoys, setting up road blockades and burning tyres. While rural societies were often romanticised as a harmonious alternative to urban life, they often experienced ongoing conflicts and inequalities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Throughout Europe, rural societies and the lifestyles of people living in the countryside, by the water or in mountainous regions have undergone fundamental changes as a result of modernisation processes in agriculture and constant interaction with urban society and political centres.
Various academic disciplines discuss the construction, or rather deconstruction, of the idea of rural space; the discursive power of the urban-rural divide; and the lasting consequences of the globalised economy. While the dichotomy between urban and rural areas is certainly evident, it exerts too strong an influence on the perception of rural societies as remnants of the pre-modern era. Rural societies can be found in agricultural communities, fishing villages and specialised agricultural regions, as well as in towns shaped by industry and commerce. However, how did societies in these areas develop against the backdrop of economic transformation processes and the cultural hegemony of the city as a model of life in the modern age? The editors of the Archiv für Sozialgeschichte (AfS) take this question as a starting point from which to examine the specific living conditions, social changes and political developments in rural areas from the early nineteenth century to modern industrial societies at the end of the twentieth century.
Rural ways of life, and the transformations they have undergone, have shaped, and continue to shape, a large part of society. They should not be viewed as an exception to the norm. For example, in 1925, over a third of the population in Germany lived in villages with fewer than 2,000 inhabitants. By 2010, around 29 per cent of the population still lived in so-called medium-sized centres with populations of up to 20,000 and the basic infrastructure of educational institutions, healthcare and cultural offerings. What long-, medium- and short-term changes did these societies experience? Which continuities shaped community life? How were village societies and small communities organised? What self-images were created and what were the visions for the future of rural society? The focus will be on the perspective of the country and its society, with an aim of capturing a social history of rural areas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that goes beyond the idea of »being different from the city«, instead attributing an independent role to modern rural societies.

Inequalities within and between rural societies

Economic development in Germany and Europe in the modern era has brought about major structural changes to working, living and housing conditions. This has led to a transformation, but not necessarily a reduction, in various dimensions of inequality. Political processes have influenced the way in which such inequalities have been addressed: in Europe, through the gradual abolition of feudal practices from the early nineteenth century onwards; in the German Empire, through the abolition of servant regulations in 1919; in Latin America, through land reforms; in Eastern Europe and the GDR, through the collectivisation of agriculture; and in Italy, through the abolition of the sharecropping system in the 1960s. This topic area includes ownership and power relations in rural areas; the role of the state, administration, churches and religion; the structures of education, media and transport; and the repercussions of economic crises, global interdependencies and political intervention. How did functional differentiation in rural societies change from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries? How was inequality addressed in rural areas, and what changes and consequences can be identified? Inequalities between rural societies should also be considered.

Agricultural economics, the environment and social inequality in rural society

The emergence of agricultural capitalism and technical innovations in agricultural, fisheries and forestry production in nineteenth-century Europe initially led to the formation of rural class societies. These gradually dissolved over the course of the twentieth century, either disappearing entirely or being replaced by other structures of social inequality. The roles of labour and trade in rural societies underwent fundamental changes during these processes, resulting in repeated, massive transformations of social conditions and ways of life. These trends were reinforced by the global interdependence of worldwide agribusiness and environmental influences (such as the overuse of resources and climate change in the twentieth century). How did structural changes in the agricultural economy and ecological challenges affect rural areas in European and non-European societies? What social and political strategies emerged among the rural population? Who were the relevant actors?

Rural societies since the 1970s

From a contemporary historical perspective, the 1970s and 1980s were marked by a significant structural shift in industrial development (»After the Boom«), which profoundly impacted social developments and political options. Since the end of the twentieth century, financial and production crises, the ecological consequences of modern industrial lifestyles, mobility and migration movements, and an increase in authoritarian, anti-democratic movements have shaped social coexistence. Modern communication media are changing the pace and content of social discourse. The primary sector has seen a surge in technologisation and digitalisation, leading to a steady decline in the number of farms while the area under cultivation is on the rise. Rapid growth in tourism in certain areas, coupled with out-migration – particularly among the younger generation – has transformed rural societies across Europe. Meanwhile, EU subsidies, inflationary monetary policy and rising commodity prices have made investments in agricultural land attractive to corporations, pushing up land prices. What changes can be identified in rural societies in recent decades, and how can these developments be explained? Do the economic cycles of industrial society also apply to rural areas, or are different cycles at play here? Furthermore, how do the current romanticisation of rural life on the one hand and the tendency to attribute political backwardness to rural areas on the other affect the self-perception of actors in rural societies?

At a conference organised by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation on 25–26 June 2026, we would like to discuss and further develop ideas for contributions, suggested topics and general questions on the subject of the Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 67 (2027) outlined above. We invite all interested scholars to submit proposals to afs@fes.de by 15 January 2026. Proposals should not exceed 3,000 characters (including spaces) and may be written in German or English, as may the presentations and subsequent articles. The editorial team of AfS will subsequently select contributions for the inclusion in the volume. Manuscripts should be around 60,000 characters in length. The submission deadline for contributions is 31 December 2026.

Contact

Dr. Philipp Kufferath
+49 228 883-8057
afs@fes.de

Organiser: Heike Karge (University of Graz); Gundula Gahlen (German Police University, Münster); Volker Hess (Charité Berlin); Ketil Slagstad (Charité Berlin) Location: University of Graz Postcode: 8010 City: Graz Countru: Austria Takes place: In attendance Dates: 03.12.2025 - 05.12.2025  

This explorative workshop investigates institutional and praxeological approaches to psychic suffering in Eastern and Western Europe after 1945. It examines the making of trauma through broad political, ideological, environmental or social transformations in the Cold War period through processes of making visible, pathologization, legitimization, or denial. In doing so, the workshop seeks to uncover specifically European trajectories in the conceptual and institutional history of 'trauma’.

 

Trauma, Institutional Knowledge, and Social Order: European Perspectives during the Cold War

This explorative workshop investigates institutional and praxeological approaches to psychic suffering in Eastern and Western Europe after 1945. It examines the making of trauma through broad political, ideological, environmental or social transformations in the Cold War period through processes of making visible, pathologization, legitimization, or denial. Moving beyond studies focused solely on World War II and its long-term psychological consequences, we aim to understand the Cold War as a period of continued upheaval, producing new institutional responses to psychic distress while shaped by the legacies of previous violence. The workshop focuses on institutional archives and documentary sources - psychiatric and therapeutic case files, forensic assessments, hospital records, bureaucratic documents, police files, and court proceedings. These materials reveal how societies perceived, managed, and classified mental suffering - or failed to do so - under specific historical conditions. In doing so, the workshop seeks to uncover specifically European trajectories in the conceptual and institutional history of 'trauma’.

Programme

Wednesday 3rd December

Arrival of Participants
19.00 Joint Dinner

Thursday, 4th December

9.00-11.15 Panel I: Psychiatry and Medical Records

Katja Geiger-Seirafi, Ina Markova: Traces of Trauma in Psychiatric Records: Understanding Postwar Psychic Suffering in Austria after 1945

Dagmar Wernitznig: The Third Woman as Second Sex and (Mental) Asylum: Alienness, Exile, and Trauma in Early Cold War Vienna

Gábor Csikós: Captivity, Trauma, and Psychiatric Practice under Hungarian Stalinism

Coffee Break (30 minutes)

11.45-13.15 Panel II: Police and Secret Services

Anna Grutza: Between Trauma, Repression and Political Abuse: Diagnoses of Insanity in Polish Secret Police Files

Haydée Mareike Haass: Addressing mental suffering and physical disability in the post-war integration of the Bavarian police force (1950-1965)

13.15 Lunch Break (75 minutes)

14.30-16.00 Panel III: Politics and Violence

Gelinda Grinchenko: Invisible in Life, Absent in Memory: Psychiatric Patients and Institutional Silencing of Nazi Atrocities in Ukraine

Irina Pelea: Manufacturing Madness: Institutional Trauma-Making and Psychiatric Violence in Cold War Romania

Coffee Break (30 minutes)

16.30-18.45 Panel IV/1: Professional Discourses

Nataša Mišković: Partisan Hysteria and the Making of the Ethnopsychoanalyst Paul Parin

Roman Mamin: Trauma à la soviétique: Redefining the Psyche in the Cold War

Georg Wurzer: The Traumatic Legacy of the Afghan War. How the concept of PTSD came to the Soviet Union, Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania 3

20.000 Joint Dinner

Friday, 5th December

09.00-11.15 Panel IV/2: Professional Discourses

Francesco Toncich: Displacement Trauma in Psychiatric Practice on the Western Side of the Iron Curtain: The Upper Adriatic Case Study

Ketil Slagstad: Making Prognosis, Untracing Trauma. A Praxiographic Analysis of Clinical Research on Schizophrenia in the 1960s and 1970s

Victoria Shmidt: Expertise on child deprivation in socialist psychology and the global resilience movement

Break with coffee and catering (45 minutes)

12.00-13.30 Panel V: Societal Debates

Vinko Korotaj Drača: Trauma, psychiatry and murder in socialist Slovenia: The case of Metod Trobec and its cultural reflections

Mykola Neborachko: Posthumous rehabilitation as a tool of social legitimization

13.30-14.30 Discussion

Contact

gundula.gahlen@dhpol.de

Leipzig/Germany   Veranstalter: Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Sachsen; VVN-BdA Leipzig Veranstaltungsort: Capa-Haus, Jahnallee 61 PLZ: 04177 Ort: Leipzig Land: Deutschland Findet statt: In attendance Datum: 03.12.2025 Webseite: http://www.rosalux-sachsen.de   Mit der Pariser Wochenzeitung »Die Zukunft» (1938-1940) gründete KPD-Dissident Willi Münzenberg, der einflussreichste antifaschistische Organisator und Medienmacher der Zwischenkriegszeit, gemeinsam mit dem progressiven Katholiken Werner Thormann und französischen Verfechtern der Republik ein visionäres Sprachrohr aller Hitler-Gegner:innen als „Organ der Deutsch-Französischen Union“. Viel mehr als nur eine Zeitung, entpuppt sich die »Zukunft» als Klammer für eine Vielzahl offener und geheimer transnationaler Netzwerke von Hitlergegner:innen aller Schattierungen.

Anhand neuer Archivfunde aus Moskau, Berlin, London und Paris erzählt Bernhard Bayerlein eine beinahe untergegangene Geschichte: Die der letzten Kohorte europäischer Freiheitskämpfer:innen vor dem Weltkrieg, Mittler:innen und Expats zugleich, die nicht am Scheitern der politischen Parteien 1933 verzweifelten. Er schreibt von Politiker:innen, Literat:innen, Wissenschaftler:innen und Kulturschaffenden, die noch bis in den Zweiten Weltkrieg hinein den Traum von Hitlers Sturz verwirklichen wollten.

Im Anschluss an die Buchvorstellung sprechen Rhena Stürmer und Bernhard Bayerlein auch über das Erinnern an Willi Münzenberg. Während in Münzenbergs Geburtsstadt Erfurt bislang nur eine kleine Gedenktafel angebracht wurde, hat die kleine französische Gemeinde Montagne, in der sich sein Grab befindet, einen eindrucksvollen deutsch-französischen Erinnerungsort geschaffen: den Willi-Münzenberg-Weg.

Kontakt

E-Mail: info@rosalux-sachsen.de

Telefon: +49 341 96085 31

Organiser: ProvEnhance research project Host: Royal Museums of Fine Art of Belgium Postcode: 1000 Citu: Brussels Country: Belgium Takes place: In attendance Dates: 11.06.2026 - 12.06.2026 Deadline: 31.01.2026 Website: https://fine-arts-museum.be/en/research/research-projects/provenhance   We invite scholars, researchers, and cultural professionals to submit proposals for papers to be presented at the international conference organised in the context of the Belgian federal research project ProvEnhance (Enhancing the provenance data of the collections of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (RMFAB) since 1933. Scientific study, digital valorisation and narrative in context).  

Anchored in a dual research approach, the ProvEnhance project simultaneously examines the trajectories of a selection of artworks from the collections of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium and the roles of participants within the Belgian art market between 1933 and 1960, situating both within the broader dynamics of cultural dispossession and the post-war approach. Integrating provenance research, art market studies, and data science, the project—and by extension this conference—advances an interdisciplinary framework for analysing the movements of cultural objects and their connections to actors and power structures shaped by the Nationalist Socialist era and its aftermath.

While the conference has a broad international scope, submissions linked to the Belgian context—including case studies, institutional practices, or regional histories, based on Belgian traces in archival sources— are especially encouraged. However, the organisers welcome contributions from all disciplines that aim to foster (interdisciplinary) dialogue and advance research in the fields of Nazi-era provenance research and art market studies, museum collections, and the actors involved in cultural dispossession in the context of National Socialism.

Conference Themes:

Submissions are welcome on topics including, but not limited to:
- Contextual Histories and Mechanisms of Expropriation
Studies on the legal, political, and social frameworks that facilitated the seizure, forced sale, dislocation or loss of cultural property under the Nazi regime.

- Challenges in Nazi-Era Provenance Research
Methodological, ethical, and practical issues in tracing ownership, restitution processes, and the role of archives and documentation.

- Museum Collections and Provenance
Investigations into institutional collections and their acquisition practices, with a focus on objects with problematic or unclear provenance acquired from 1933 onwards. This might illuminate historical practices and networks as well as current acquisition policies for museum collections against the backdrop of National Socialist art theft.

- Valorisation and Outreach in Museums
Methods, challenges and ethical questions in the mediation of objects from museum collections that are linked to the context of Nazi injustice.

- The Art Market: Frameworks, Actors, and Networks
Research on the structures and dynamics of the Belgian and international art markets in the period 1933-1960. Topics may include art dealers, collectors, intermediaries, and their interactions with i.e. occupying forces, museums and post-war restitution authorities or the military justice system. Contributions on the legal, political, cultural and/or institutional contexts governing the Belgian and international art trade, spoliations, and restitutions. Analyses of market mechanisms, such as pricing, and the economic dimensions of wartime and post-war art transactions.

- Continuities in the Belgian and International Art Market
Research into actors such as art dealers or museum staff involved in both the process of dispossession as well as the post-war systems for the repatriation and restitution of seized cultural property. Insights into art market participants who were active before, during, and after World War II, and who may have benefited from a network and/or collection of cultural objects established before and during the National Socialist regime.

- Provenance and Art Market Data, Research, and Infrastructure
Frameworks for structuring and managing provenance and art market information, including gaps and uncertainties through data modelling, ontologies, controlled vocabularies, and other standardised formats. Topics may also address digital and collaborative environments for encoding related data, the application of FAIR and linked open data principles, and the use of platforms such as Wikidata and other open infrastructures to support provenance and art market research.

- Digital Methods for Provenance Research and Art Market Studies
Contributions that examine the application of visualisation, data analysis, and machine learning techniques to explore provenance and art market dynamics. Topics may include automated archival data extraction, entity recognition and linking, network and geospatial analysis, deep learning or natural language processing for revealing patterns, connections, and insights within provenance and art market data.

Practical information & submission guidelines:
The conference will take place from June 11 to 12, 2026 in Brussels, at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. The conference language is English.

Proposals for contribution can be submitted as abstracts (maximum 300 words), accompanied by a short biography (maximum 200 words) in a single file via email with the subject 'CFP ProvEnhance' to: provenance@fine-arts-museum.be.

The deadline for submitting proposals is January 31, 2026. Notifications for accepted presentations will be sent by March 1 at the latest.

Scientific Organizing Committee:
Aude Alexandre (RMFAB), Fenya Almstadt (RMFAB), Ingrid Goddeeris (RMFAB), Prof. Meike Hopp (TU Berlin), Dr. Mattes Lammert (Universität Zürich), Alexandre Leroux (RMFAB), Dr. Dirk Luyten (Belgian State Archive / CegeSoma), Prof. Kim Oosterlinck (RMFAB), Prof. Anne-Sophie Radermecker (ULB), Eléa De Winter (ULB).

Contact

provenance@fine-arts-museum.be

Organiser: University of Tübingen; University of Gothenburg; University of Vienna; American Historical Association (University of Vienna) Location: University of Vienna Funded by: University of Tübingen; University of Vienna; University of Gothenburg; European Research Council; FWF Postcode: 1010 City: Vienna Country: Austria Takes place: In attendance Dates: 28.09.2026 - 01.10.2026 Deadline: 20.12.2025 Website: https://rhs.hypotheses.org/  

The University of Tübingen (UT), the University of Vienna (UV), the University of Gothenburg (UG) and the American Historical Association (AHA) are pleased to announce the sixth International Seminar in Historical Refugee Studies, which will be held at the University of Vienna, September 28 – October 1, 2026.

 

Historicizing the Refugee Experience, 17th–21st Centuries

The purpose of this seminar is to promote the historical study of refugees, who are too often regarded as a phenomenon of recent times. By viewing the problem of refugees from a historical perspective, the seminar seeks to complicate and contextualize our understanding of people who have fled political or religious conflicts, persecution, and violence. By bringing together 14 advanced PhD students and early postdocs from different parts of the world whose individual research projects examine refugees in different times and places, we intend to give a sense of purpose to this emerging field of study and demonstrate the value of viewing the plight of refugees from a historical perspective. The seminar is meant as a platform to share research findings, ideas, and work in progress.

We invite contributions from recent PhDs, as well as young scholars in the final stages of their dissertations. In addition to historians, we also encourage applications from researchers working in fields such as sociology, political science, anthropology, ethnic and area studies, but expect the application to make explicit reference to historical dimensions. Possible contributions include:
- Studies of refugee movements and exile diasporas in various periods and places;
- Studies of the ethnic, gendered, racial, religious, and other characteristics of refugee groups and how they impact on reception policies and processes;
- Studies of reception and aid policies, and on the repercussions of refugees on host states and societies;
- Studies of the changing inter-state framework of refugee movements, such as international or inter-imperial cooperation, the role of international governmental or non-governmental actors, humanitarian organizations, etc.;
- Studies of the infrastructures of exile (camps, networks, economies, regulations)
- Studies of the conceptual history of refugees and exile (legal history, administrative practice, cultural history, etc.)

Papers will be pre-circulated five weeks before the seminar to allow maximum time for peers and invited senior scholars to engage in discussions on the state of the field. The workshop language will be English. The organizers will cover basic expenses for travel and accommodation. The seminar is hosted by Jan C. Jansen (UT), Dane Kennedy (George Washington University), Kerstin von Lingen (UV) and Sari Nauman (UG). The participants will be joined by a group of leading senior scholars in the field of refugee history, including Delphine Diaz (University of Reims-Institut universitaire de France), Peter Gatrell (University of Manchester) and Susanne Lachenicht (University of Bayreuth).

The seminar is supported by the University of Tübingen, the University of Vienna, the University of Gothenburg, the Pro Futura Scientia Project “Outsiders Within”, the FWF Project “Norms, Regulations, Agency” and the ERC projects “GLORE. Global Resettlement Regimes” and “Atlantic Exiles.” For more information on the seminar and its previous cohorts, visit its website at https://rhs.hypotheses.org.

Please submit a brief CV (max. 2 pages) and a proposal of no more than 750 words in English in one PDF by December 20, 2025 to refugee-history@histsem.uni-tuebingen.de. Please contact us under the same email address if you have any questions. Successful applicants will be notified in February 2026.

Contact

E-Mail: refugee-history@histsem.uni-tuebingen.de

Organiser: Nicolas Hafner / Devarya Srivastava, The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva (IHEID); Atwa Jaber, Uni Basel (The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva (IHEID)) Host: The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva (IHEID) Funded by: Swiss National Science Foundation ZIP: 1202 Location: Genève Country: Switzerland Takes place: In attendance From - Until: 29.04.2026 - 30.04.2026 Deadline: 18.01.2026 Website: https://decolonization-now.com/  

This workshop explores the tensions between the limits and possibilities of development during decolonisation, recapturing the sense of anticipation and possibility that accompanied the formal end of empire. We invite contributions that examine development not merely as a legacy of empire or an instrument of control, but as a site of contestation and imagination—a field in which postcolonial actors debated their ideas for the future. What does it mean to see decolonisation as development—and development as a key arena in which decolonisation itself was defined, debated, and enacted?

 

Decolonisation and the Promises of Development, ca. 1950-1980

In recent years, scholarship on decolonisation and development has placed strong emphasis on continuities with the colonial past, often to explain the shortcomings and contradictions of postcolonial development projects. While this has yielded crucial insights into the endurance of imperial structures, it has also muted the sense of anticipation and possibility that accompanied the formal end of empire.

This workshop seeks to recapture that moment of promise, exploring the tensions between the limits and possibilities of development during decolonisation. We invite historically grounded contributions that examine decolonisation and development as intertwined processes, rather than separate or sequential ones. Development was not only a policy domain or a colonial legacy, but also a vital arena in which postcolonial futures were imagined, contested, and enacted. Just as some actors embraced development as a tool of liberation and worldmaking, others challenged, subverted, or rejected it altogether, envisioning alternative paths beyond the developmentalist paradigm.

We invite contributions that examine development not merely as a legacy of empire or an instrument of control, but as a site of contestation and imagination—a field in which postcolonial actors debated their ideas for the future. What does it mean to see decolonisation as development—and development as a key arena in which decolonisation itself was defined, debated, and enacted? Submissions that examine development teaching institutions, training programmes, and sites of knowledge production are especially encouraged, as they offer insight into how expertise and education shaped postcolonial developmental thought.

Potential Topics
- Pluralities of Development – socialist, non-aligned, indigenous, and South–South approaches to development.
- Development as Worldmaking – planning, anticipation, and alternative global orders in the postcolonial moment.
- Institutions of Development Education – universities, training centres, and expert networks as laboratories of postcolonial development knowledge.
- State-Building and Sovereignty – development as a practice of governance and legitimacy in newly independent states.
- Transnational Solidarities – exchanges and collaborations within the Third World and beyond.
- Development and its Discontents – contemporary critiques, rejections, and failures of development projects.
- Affective and Intellectual Histories – recovering optimism, anticipation, and forward-looking imaginaries of decolonisation.

Please note that submissions must explicitly deal with both development and decolonisation, in line with the workshop theme.

Format
The workshop will consist of five to six individual sessions of 1h to 1.5h maximum, depending on the number of participants. Each session will be dedicated to one person’s contribution only. The sessions will be opened by a short discussion of one of the three invited senior scholars. Afterwards, all participants will discuss the contribution amongst themselves, with the author only listening and taking notes. The final part of every session will give authors the opportunity to respond to the preceding discussion or ask questions. The workshop will be closed to outside audiences. The idea is to workshop advanced work with a view to collectively publish our findings as a special issue. Prospective participants are thus requested to submit unpublished work (papers already in a review process are not allowed). Participants are expected to set enough time aside to read thoroughly other participants’ work.

We invite interested candidates to send us an abstract of their proposed contribution (max. 300 words), along with a three-four sentence bio to nicolas.hafner@graduateinstitute.ch by Sunday, 18 January 2026. Submissions that do not fulfil all the requirements set out above will not be considered. Please start the file name with your last name first (e.g. Lastname_Firstname) and use “Abstract for Decolonisation and the Promises of Development” as the email subject.

Reimbursement of travel and accommodation expenses related to the workshop will be considered for participants who may need it. Please state in your email whether you will need funding and for what (accommodation and/or travel).

Contact (announcement)

nicolas.hafner@graduateinstitute.ch