From domestic servants and agricultural laborers to apprentices, soldiers, and clerks – countless people across history lived and worked in the service of others. This workshop explores service not merely as a job category, but as a lens for understanding dependency, authority, gender, and social negotiation in premodern and modern societies. We invite doctoral and postdoctoral researchers working on Central Europe and the former Habsburg lands (broadly defined) to submit abstracts of max. 300 words by 15 July 2026.
Those Who Serve: Service, Labor, and Social Hierarchies in Historical Perspective
Across past societies, countless individuals lived and worked in the service of others. From the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, domestic servants, agricultural laborers, apprentices, soldiers, clerks, and other dependents occupied positions that were essential to the functioning of households, institutions, and states. Service relationships structured everyday life and social order, shaping hierarchies of authority, gender, age, and status. In many societies, service was a common stage in the life cycle, particularly for young people who entered domestic or agricultural service before marriage, while others spent much of their lives in positions defined by dependence and obligation.
Yet service was rarely a straightforward form of employment. Those who served often occupied ambiguous positions between dependence and autonomy, obligation and contract, belonging and subordination. Service could be embedded in life-cycle labor systems, household hierarchies, patronage networks, and institutional structures ranging from estates and workshops to courts, monasteries, and administrative bureaucracies. In rural societies in particular, forms of labor performed within households and farms – by servants, family members, and especially women – were central to economic and social life. At the same time, such labor did not necessarily constitute »service« in a strict sense. The conference therefore also welcomes contributions that examine how women’s work and family labor intersected with, but were not identical to, relations of service, and how these boundaries were historically constructed and negotiated.
This workshop situates service within the social and economic structures of the Ancien Régime, where relations of dependency, hierarchy, and obligation were central to the organization of work and everyday life. Rather than approaching service merely as a category of labor, we propose it as a broader analytical lens encompassing dependency, discipline, authority, and negotiation. We are particularly interested in forms of service embedded in household, rural, and institutional settings – as well as urban environments, estates, and workshops – while also encouraging reflections on how these relations were transformed in the transition to modern and capitalist societies. The workshop invites contributions that explore the historical worlds of those who served and the social relations that defined service across these diverse contexts.
At a conceptual level, the workshop seeks to highlight the analytical value of »service« as a category. Focusing on those who served allows us to cut across and complicate traditional frameworks such as class, gender, and race, and to illuminate forms of dependency and social relations that these categories alone cannot fully capture. In this sense, »service« offers a way to rethink how labor, hierarchy, and everyday life were structured in historical societies. At the same time, relationships of service were inherently dynamic and contested. Those who served were rarely entirely powerless, and relations of domination were never fully one-directional. Instead, service relationships were shaped by ongoing processes of negotiation, accommodation, and resistance. Approaching service in this way allows us to foreground the interplay between power and resistance that underpinned many forms of dependency.
The workshop particularly welcomes contributions addressing forms of service and servitude in Central European societies and the territories historically connected to the Habsburg lands, from the medieval period to the twentieth century. At the same time, we encourage papers that examine how forms of service changed over time, including in the transition from premodern to modern and capitalist societies.
We invite contributions that may include, but are not limited to, the following topics:
- Domestic service and household hierarchies (urban/rural)
- Agricultural servants, family labor, and gendered divisions in rural economies
- Women’s labor in agricultural households and family farms
- Farm servants, seasonal workers, and peasant labor relations
- Apprenticeship, guild service, and workplace hierarchies
- Servants of the court, church, or state
- Legal frameworks regulating servants and dependent labor
- Mobility, migration, and life-cycle service
- Changing forms of service and servitude over time
- Transformations of service in the transition from premodern to modern (or pre-capitalist to capitalist) societies
- Comparative perspectives on service and servitude
Practical Information
The workshop will take place in person in Ljubljana (exact venue TBA) and will consist of 20-minute presentations followed by discussion. Lunch and dinner will be provided for participants. The language of the workshop will be English.
Participants without access to institutional funding may apply for partial travel support (subject to availability).
Abstract Submissions
Please send an abstract of max. 300 words and a short biographical note (max. 100 words) to: brina.kotar@ff.uni-lj.si
Deadline for submissions 15 July 2026. Applicants will be notified by 5 August 2026.