ESTER, the European Graduate School for Training in Economic and Social Historical Research, is an international postgraduate network incorporating more than 60 European universities. The network organizes research training in the form of annual series of Advanced Seminars on specialized themes within Economic and Social History. Each seminar can host a maximum of 15 postgraduates from European universities who are given the opportunity to discuss their work with a number of renowned senior scholars in their field of research. The network language is English.

At the latest update (February 2000) the following sites were added to the WWW Virtual Library: Labour and Business History, bringing the total number to 1,584.

Labour historian Mary Davis (Head of Trade Union Studies at The University of London) will discuss the life and politics of Sylvia Pankhurst on Thursday 9th March, 7pm, at Frontline Books, 255 Wilmslow Road, Rusholme, Manchester, England.

Mary's book on Sylvia was published last year by Pluto Press. More information on 44-(0)161-242-0909.

Posted: 25 February 2000

In cooperation with the Centre international de Recherches sur l'Anarchisme (Lausanne), the Centro Studi Libertari (Archivio Giuseppe Pinelli) of Milan organizes an international meeting on "Anarchism and Judaism" to be held in Venice, 5-7 May 2000.

The meeting consists of a conference that will take place in the auditorium of the Campo Santa Margherita (5-6 May), and a cultural program scheduled in the evenings of 5-6 May and during the whole of 7 May in San Leonardo Hall.

The latest work of the Fondazione Vera Nocentini is the publication of a guide to the trade union historical archives of the Italian Confederation of Workers Unions (CISL) of Turin.

The Fondazione was conceived and organized "as a cultural service for all those who are interested in getting informed about trade unions and the social problems in Turin and in the province, in studying its characteristics, events and activities in the years following the Second World War." It offers an archive -- the one this guide is about -- and a newspaper library.

& -- the ampersand is the essential part of "La BDIC & ses lecteurs" -- is a new bulletin published by the Bibliothèque de Documentation internationale contemporaine. The first issue appeared in December 1999.

For comrades concerned to know the latest on the Noel Butlin Archives Centre (NBAC) at the Australian National University, the following is a summary of the press release published after a December conference hosted by the Canberra Region Branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History.

In 1999, the Cahiers du Monde russe published a special issue entitled: "Assessing the new Soviet archival sources / Archives et nouvelles sources de l'histoire soviétique, une réévaluation".

Articles include:

Workshop on Working-Class and Labour History

The Canadian Committee on Labour History is organizing a Workshop during the Congress of the Social Science and Humanities in Edmonton.

Date: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Tuesday, 30 May
Place: Old St. Stephen's College, University of Alberta Campus

Details of the sessions, which will include both academics and community activists, will be announced shortly.

All Welcome...

Masayo Umezawa Duus. The Japanese Conspiracy: The Oahu Sugar Strike of 1920. (Translated by Beth Cory and adapted by Peter Duus.) Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. xiii + 375pp. $55 (cloth), 0-520-20484-0: $18.95 (paper), 0-520-20485-9.

Reviewed by Edward D. Beechert, Professor Emeritus of Labor History, University of Hawaii.
Published by EH.Net (February, 2000)