Mos Historicus: Call for Articles
The history of work and labour has long occupied a central place within European social history, offering a key lens through which to examine social relations, hierarchies, forms of power, and economic formations across the longue durée. Rather than approaching work solely as an economic function, historical scholarship has increasingly foregrounded work as a lived social experience -one that has shaped identities, values, and modes of belonging. From the medieval social category of the laboratores (“those who labour”) and the emergence of early work ethics, to the formation of the working class and the consolidation of new labour regimes during industrialisation, the history of work provides crucial insights into the making of European societies. At the same time, questions concerning the boundaries and meanings of work, free or unfree wage labour, and invisible forms of work (domestic, student, and other forms) render the history of work a persistently relevant field of inquiry.
Throughout much of the twentieth century, labour history developed in close dialogue with large-scale interpretations of economic development and capitalism, often privileging class formation, production, and collective struggle as its primary analytical frameworks (Smith 1776; Ricardo 1817; Marx 1867). Social historians, especially through the Annales tradition (Bloch 1939; Duby 1962; Le Goff 1977) and the British Marxist school (Thompson 1963; Hobsbawm 1964; Hilton 1969), redirected attention toward workers themselves, labour relations, and collective practices, while remaining deeply embedded in the political and ideological concerns of post-war Europe. As a result, labour history often remained constrained by ideological narratives and relatively rigid interpretive models.
Since the 1980s, however, the field has undergone significant reconfiguration. Influenced by the cultural turn, gender history, and critical social theory, history of work has expanded beyond class and production as exclusive analytical categories. Scholars have increasingly examined meanings of work, embodied experience, language, representation, gender, age, and everyday practice as constitutive dimensions of working lives (Joyce 1991; Bennett 1996; Simontron & Montenach 2018). More recently, interdisciplinary approaches, alongside global and digital history, have further widened the scope of inquiry, challenging Eurocentric narratives and opening new methodological and conceptual horizons (van der Linden 2008; Lucassen 2021; Schiel et al. 2023).
Contemporary developments—most notably the COVID-19 pandemic, the expansion of the digital economy, and the rapid rise of artificial intelligence—have once again brought fundamental questions about the value, meaning, regulation, and limits of work to the forefront of scholarly debate. Against this backdrop, Mos Historicus: A Critical Review of European History dedicates its fourth issue to Labour History / History of Work and invites submissions that engage critically with historical approaches to work in Europe and beyond.
Contributions may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:
- History of Work/Labour and its historiographies: theoretical frameworks, concepts, and interpretive shifts
- Power structures and social hierarchies: labour regimes, disciplinary mechanisms, and labour relations
- Institutional frameworks, work ethics, and normative value systems
- Seasonality, mobility, and migration
- Gendered, age-based, and embodied dimensions of work
- Cultural representations of work and symbolic systems
- Work identities and cultures
- Labour movements, collectivisation, and collective action: mobilisations, claims, and forms of organization
Mos Historicus welcomes contributions covering different historical periods and methodological approaches, and particularly encourages submissions that engage critically with sources, concepts, and interpretive boundaries within labour history.
Please consult the following links for further information:
Article Submission Deadline: until the 30th of April, 2026.