Welcome to the Cluster of Excellence at the  
Bonn Center for Dependency & Slavery Studies

Lunch Talk with the editors and authors of the Special Issue “Beyond Slavery and Freedom”, published in the Journal of Global Slavery.

Since the global turn, research about strong asymmetrical dependencies across time and space (among which, but not limited to slavery, bondage, labor and coercion) has greatly expanded both conceptually and geographically. Asia, however defined, is certainly not the blind spot it once was in labor and slavery studies anymore. Yet, despite the pluralization recently generated by global labor and global slavery studies, Asia still remains marginal in many respects. Slavery in early-modern Asia, to mention only one example, is increasingly studied through the lens of European archives, and through European terms of what this slavery entailed, leaving aside the study of forms of exploitation and forced displacement that took place before, beside and beyond the European presence in Asia. What seems to be particularly missing in current discussions is an emic perspective from Asia; that is to say, a more granular and accurate view of the practices, norms and their evolutions, from existing vernacular sources (written, oral and material) and from the actor’s experiences, categories and worldviews. What also seems to be missing is a genuine accounting of Asian historiographies, as well as a proper assessment of the legacies and memories of these diverse phenomena in the contemporary societies of Asia.

In a Special Issue on Slavery and colonialism in German cultural memory

Our next conference takes place in Niebuhrstr. 5, on September 10.

We are thrilled to congratulate BCDSS PhD Researcher Magnus Goffin on the publication of his dissertation!

It is with deep sadness that we learned of the passing of Professor Trevor Burnard, director of the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull.

The online version of our most recent DEPENDENT issue is out! You can download it from our website (see below).
The print copy will be available from the beginning of August.