Events organized by the BCDSS  

See below a list of all events organized by members of the BCDSS.
For our JOSEPH C.MILLER MEMORIAL LECTURES or BCDSS CONFERENCES, see the separate navigation bars.

Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Fabiane Popinigis
Online via Zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
What was the role of the intersections of race, class/ethnicity and gender in different lawsuits initiated by women who worked in retail stores against ...
Children at Work, in a Period of Transition, 400-1000 AD
HYBRID event: On site ...
09:30 AM - 07:00 PM
A comparative conference, organized by Heinz Heinen Fellow Christina Laes, that will enable the audience to pay attention to voices often unheard, in language ...
Workshop: Global Voyages, Local Sites
HYBRID event: On site ...
09:00 AM
"Global Voyages, Local Sites: The Long Shadow of Atlantic Slavery in the Anglo-American and German Pacific" workshop brings together renowned scholars working ...
Friday Seminar with Roberto Hofmeister Pich
Heussallee 18-24 ...
04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
This week, Roberto Hofmeister Pich (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Brazil) is looking forward to a lively discussion of and ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Claudia Jarzebowski
Festsaal, University ...
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
What did a life under the circumstances of enslavement and strong asymmetrical dependency do to children? What were the effects and how are they to be traced ...
International Workshop on Romani Asymmetrical Dependencies
Onsite in Niebuhrstraße ...
09:30 AM
The International Workshop on Romani Asymmetrical Dependencies is dedicated to exploring asymmetrical relations and understanding co-dependencies between ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Dr. Enrique Martino
HYBRID event: On site ...
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
What are the challenges of accurately measuring import and export prices in West and Central Africa from the 15th century to the First World War? Our next ...
Friday Seminar with Rafaël Thiébaut
Heussallee 18-24 ...
04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
This week, BCDSS fellow Rafaël Thiébaut is looking forward to a lively discussion and feedback on his project “Unfree Labour in the Southwest Indian Ocean ...
Panel discussion "Diversity in German Academia"
Am Hof 1, 53113 Bonn
05:00 PM - 07:00 PM
In our panel discussion “Diversity in German Academia - A Reflective Look at the Current State”, scholars and activists will take stock of how German ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Uroš Matić
HYBRID event: On site ...
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
What was the gender structure of war and violence during the Napatan and Meroitic periods? Our upcoming Lecture focuses on the gender background of war, ...
Public narratives of history: Indigenous & Afro-Brazilian slavery
HYBRID event
01:00 PM
The institution of slavery lasted more than three centuries in Brazil, the last country to abolish black slavery in the Americas in 1888. This event aims to ...
Friday Seminar with Mònica Ginés-Blasi
Heussallee 18-24 ...
04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
This week, Mònica Ginés-Blasi, Marie Sklodowska Curie Action Fellow at the Institut d’Asie Orientale of the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon (2022-24) and ...
Joseph C. M. Memorial Lecture by Zhanna Popova
HYBRID event: On site ...
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
What kind of agency did women inmates have in the forced labor camps in the Soviet Union, and how did they experience it? Based on lesser-known memoirs of ...
Friday Seminar with Marçal de Menezes Paredes
Online via Zoom
04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
In this Friday Seminar session, Marçal de Menezes Paredes, Associate Professor at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Brazil, is ...
Friday Seminar with Raquel Sirotti
Heussallee 18-24, ...
04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
This week, Raquel R. Sirotti, BCDSS research group leader and postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory in ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Christian Langer
Online via Zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
Forced migration and compulsory foreign labour in the rise of Egypt as a regional great power and cultural powerhouse? Connecting with research on ...
Friday Seminar with Stephan Conermann
Heussallee 18-24, ...
04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
In this week’s seminar, Stephan Conermann will throw some light on the question “How and Where to Apply for Funding?” and talk about the German funding systems ...
Joseph C. M. Memorial Lecture by Décio Muianga & Diogo Oliveira
HYBRID event: On site ...
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
New perspectives on the past slave trade activities and its impacts in Mozambique: Understanding this process through archaeological (terrestrial and ...
Friday Seminar with Carolina González
Heussallee 18-24, ...
04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
This week, Carolina González is looking forward to a lively discussion of and feedback on her presentation, "’With her personal service’: Domestic work, ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Victoria Basualdo
Online via Zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
Latin American dictatorships in the mid-twentieth century: How connected were they with the economic, social and labor struggle? This lecture will mainly ...
International Conference
Bonner Universitätsforum ...
02:30 PM
Competing Memories: The Politics of Remembering Enslavement, Emancipation and Indentureship in the Caribbean
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Lara Putnam
Online via Zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
This talk seeks to advance critical dialogue about historians’ choices of topic, sources, and methods, asking what kinds of silences become ...
Friday Seminar with Julie Miller
Heussallee 18-24, ...
04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
This week, Julie Miller is looking forward to a lively discussion of and feedback on her presentation, “A History of the Person in America.” Her ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Nitin Varma
Online via Zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
Dr. Nitin Varma will unwrap biographies of servitude, drawing upon a range of legal and ego documents from nineteenth-century northern India. Based on a ...
CANCELLED Friday Seminar with John Agbonifo
Heussallee 18-24, ...
04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
In this Friday Seminar, Heinz Heinen Kolleg Fellow John Agbonifo will speak on his research project “Neither Slave nor Free Labour? Understanding Labour ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Larissa Rosa Corrêa
Online via Zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
Prof. Larissa Rosa Corrêa, of Pontifical Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro, examines the development of labor laws in Brazil from the 1930s. When the ...
Friday Seminar with Hillary Taylor
Heussallee 18-24, ...
04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
For this week's Friday Seminar, Heinrich Heinen Kolleg Fellow Hillary Taylor discusses her project “Violence at Work in Early Modern Britain and its Overseas ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Johannes Preiser-Kapeller
Online via Zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
What impact did the First Plague Pandemic have on mobilizations of military and civil labor? At our next JCMM Lecture, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, of the ...
Friday Seminar with Stephan Conermann
Heussallee 18-24 or ...
04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
This week, Stephan Conermann is looking forward to a lively general discussion of labor-related asymmetrical dependencies and mobility. Research Area D ...
POSTPONED Book Launch and Discussion
Heusallee 18-24
02:00 PM - 04:00 PM
We regret to inform you that this event had to be postponed. We will share the new date shortly! We hope you can join us then! We invite our authors, Prof. ...
Friday Seminar with Sara Eriksson
Heussallee 18-24, ...
04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
This time, PhD Guest Researcher (University of California, Berkeley) Sara Eriksson will present her research project "The Average Person – Looking for Enslaved ...
Viola Müller to attend the Kinderuni!
Kreuzbergweg 28, Bonn
05:00 PM - 06:00 PM
On February 13, 2023, Dr. Viola Müller will represent the BCDSS at the Kinderuni, where she will give a lecture on the History of Sugar. Abstract: Sugar ...
Friday Seminar with Christian Laes
Heussallee 18-24 or ...
04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
This week, Christian Laes is looking forward to a lively discussion of and feedback on his presentation “Writing the histories of slavery in Antiquity. How to ...
Launch of the Library of Ancient Slavery
Heusallee 18–24
04:15 PM - 07:00 PM
One of the largest libraries on ancient slavery in the world with its rich holdings has moved from the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature to the Bonn ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Claudia Jarzebowski
Online via Zoom & On ...
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
What did a life under the circumstances of enslavement and strong asymmetrical dependency do to children? What were the effects and how are they to be traced ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Thomas Duve
Online via Zoom or ...
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
The lecture will discuss the still emerging field of global legal history and provides an approach to legal history that draws on the history of knowledge and ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Alexander Keese
Online via Zoom or ...
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
European colonialism in sub-Saharan Africa relied (at least before the end of the Second World War) upon mechanisms of labour exploitation through forced ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Johannes Rainer
Via Zoom or Juridicum, ...
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
The major question will be how enfranchised slaves, the so called freedmen, could acquire the Roman citizenship. In order to understand the dynamics and ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Timothy J. Coates
Online via Zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
The town of Castro Marim in Portugal was a legal haven and later the site of internal exile for several thousand minor sinners and convicts from the Middle ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by João Fragoso & Thiago Krause
Online via Zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
In the next Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture on October 24, João Fragoso and Thiago Krause will do a comparative analysis of the two largest slaving ports in ...
Socare Junior Conference 2022
Online via Zoom
03:00 PM
Whose knowledge is recognized, and what voices are heard within Caribbean studies? This conference focuses on how knowledge is produced, shared, and received, ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy
Hybrid event
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
This talk derives from Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy’s award-winning book, Between Fitness and Death: Disability and Slavery in the Caribbean (University of Illinois ...
International Conference: Social History of Capitalism
Online via Zoom
03:00 PM
The International Social History Association (ISHA), the Bonn Centre for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS), and the Cluster of Excellence “Contestations ...
Conference on "Freedom and Liberation in Mediterranean Antiquity“
Wissenschaftszentrum ...
Whole Day
We invite you to join our international conference on "Freedom and Liberation in Mediterranean Antiquity", which aims to contribute to a closer analysis and ...
Conference: Transforming Spirit Bodies
Bonner Universitätsforum,...
02:00 PM
This conference focuses on the bodies and embodiments of spirits, their (im-)materialities, and the bodily transformations, which they may be ...
Annual Conference “Norms, Institutions & Practices of Dependency"
Hybrid event: online via ...
09:00 AM
Since 2018, the Bonn Center of Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS) unites internationally renowned scholars researching historic forms of strong ...
Cancelled: Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Stefan Talmon
Online via Zoom
04:00 PM - 06:00 PM
We regret to say that this lecture was cancelled. It will be re-scheduled in due course. Sorry for any inconvenience! The lecture traces public international ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Dan-el Padilla Peralta
Online via zoom
04:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Everyone is welcome to join this public lecture online via zoom! The abstract is due any time soon.
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Kristalyn Shefveland
Online via zoom
04:00 PM - 06:00 PM
In the late seventeenth century, Virginia colonist Edmund Scarburgh and his mistress Ann Toft owned and sold many Native laborers as indentured servants and ...
Joseph C. Miller Lecture by Alexander Geurds
Online via zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
Archaeological views onto the later pre-Columbian past of southern Central America –roughly defined as including Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, but ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Mark Hauser
Online via zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
Extreme weather events, changing precipitation, and sea-level rise have made thosecliving in the global north more mindful of the vulnerability of lives and ...
New Perspectives on Cultural Heritage and German Global History
Bonn Center for ...
03:55 PM
Conference on July 6–8, 2022 at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies organized by Claudia Jarzebowski, BCDSS, and Pia Wiegmink, BCDSS, Susanne ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Thomas Pierson
Online via zoom
04:15 PM - 06:15 PM
Public servants are not ordinary employees. Their relationship to the modern state is special. According to prevailing opinion, this special relation ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture Maren Niehoff
Online via zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
This lecture explores to what extent one can discern a concept of personal freedom as a basic right in the first century CE. Philo's tractate "On the Freedom ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Finnbar Barry Flood
Online via zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
One of the most celebrated extant medieval Arabic manuscripts is an illustrated copy of the Maqāmāt (Assemblies) of Abu Muhmmad al-Qasim ibn ‘Ali al-Hariri ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Chouki el Hamel
Online via zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
This presentation explains how the archives created a wall of silence regarding issues of slavery and race. The archival silence created an intentional gap in ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Miles Ogborn
Online via zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
This lecture examines the ways in which Christianity came to define the debate over slavery and freedom – and the nature of the free black subject – in the ...
Joseph C. Miller Lecture by Toyin Falola
Online via zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
One of the hallmarks of research is to reflect and inquire into the characteristics of society and broaden the scope of its development. As a result, research ...
Joseph C. Miller Lecture by Hendrik Hartog
Online via zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
The talk will reflect about the relationships between criminal law & policing, on the one hand, & property law, on the other, focusing on the historical case ...
Joseph C. Miller Lecture by Adriana Chira
Online via zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
In nineteenth-century Santiago de Cuba, the island of Cuba's radical cradle, Afro-descendant peasants forged freedom and devised their own formative path to ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Rafael de Bivar Marquese
Online via Zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
The lecture investigates the history of coffee in the longue durée, from its first emergence in the commercial networks of the Ottoman Empire to the world ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Juan Lewis
Online via zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
In this lecture I will analyse whether Jesus of Nazareth, his family, and close friends and disciples were slave owners. Most scholars now agree that the ...
Slavery in Africa: Past, Legacies and Present (SLAFCO)
University of Yaoundé ...
08:30 AM
The conference is intended to contribute to this assessment of knowledge about slavery in Africa and to take stock of the most recent significant scientific ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Nabil Matar
Online via zoom
05:00 PM - 06:30 PM
The study of captivity in the early modern Mediterranean has largely relied on European and Ottoman sources. The Arabic archive furnishes further information ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Paul Lovejoy
Online via Zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
The lecture will discuss how the construction of open-source relational databases has altered the scholarly study of slavery. Once it was thought that there ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Christine Walker
Online via zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
In this talk, Christine Walker discusses her book, Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholders and the Creation of Britain’s Atlantic Empire. Jamaica Ladies is the ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Peter Gemeinhardt
Hybrid event: online via ...
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
What has education to do with dependency? In a famous letter, Jerome (d. 419) narrates that, in a dream vision, he was called before Christ and accused of ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Johannes Auenmüller
Online via zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
The discourse on social relationships in the context of status, prestige and belonging is a key aspect of Pharaonic elite culture. Social relations and ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Magnus Ressel
Online via zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
Giving the order to send out European ships to transport Africans to the Americas was a rather discreet operation that was strongly connected to the perception ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Tommaso Beggio
Online via zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
The so-called servi poenae were slaves subjugated to their legal status as a consequence of a sentence that deprived convicts of their freedom and, at times, ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Caroline Wallis
Online via zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
The aim of this talk is to reflect on the consequences of fluctuating levels of asymmetrical dependencies on the symbolic productions of the political and ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Andrew Wells
Online via zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
Animals played a central role in the history of transatlantic slavery that has only recently attracted scholarly interest. Of vital importance to plantation ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Karen Woods Weierman
Online via Zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
Karen Woods Weierman’s recent book, The Case of the Slave-Child, Med: Free Soil in Antislavery Boston, restores the complicated history of antislavery Boston’s ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Pamela Crossley
Online via Zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
The vogue for "ethnicity" in many fields of historical study has reified a concept for which there is little direct evidence in the historical record before ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Girija Joshi
Online via Zoom
04:00 PM - 06:00 PM
This talk reflects upon the contested definitions of ‘rightful’ dependency in early nineteenth-century Panjab, focusing specifically upon the overlapping bonds ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Clara Almagro–Vidal
Hybrid event
04:00 PM - 06:00 PM
The main reason for the existence of military orders was to protect Christendom and contribute to its growth. In the context of the ongoing conflict between ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Martin Ebner
Hybrid event
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
In seinem Brief an Philemon setzt sich der Apostel Paulus dafür ein, dass ein Sklave bekommt, was die christliche Taufformel ihm verspricht: „… da ist nicht ...
Humboldt-Kolleg: Slavery, Freedom, Sustainability, and Pandemic
Hybrid event
09:00 AM
The conference "Humboldt-Kolleg: Slavery, Freedom, Sustainability, and Pandemicis" is organized by Roberto Hofmeister Pich and supported by the Alexander von ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Denis Regnier
Online via Zoom
04:15 PM - 06:00 PM
The legacy of slavery is a crucial social issue in some, if not all, Malagasy societies. To understand why this is the case, I argue that we need to analyze ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Elisabeth Herrmann-Otto
Hybrid event
04:15 PM - 06:15 PM
In theological and historical research, Christian talk of the "slave of God" has so far been understood as a metaphor. Although it was oriented towards the ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Marcos Leitão De Almeida
Online via Zoom
04:00 PM - 06:00 PM
My work addresses a persistent problem in African history: the deep history of slavery in the Lower Congo region. While historians acknowledge the importance ...
Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Marcos Leitão De Almeida
Online via Zoom
04:00 PM - 06:00 PM
My work addresses a persistent problem in African history: the deep history of slavery in the Lower Congo region. While historians acknowledge the importance ...
Artistic Communities and Patronage in Asia
Online via Zoom
11:30 AM
This international conference brings together specialist from different disciplines, focusing on a number of regions of Asia, such as India, Nepal, Tibet, the ...
Joseph C. Miller Lecture by Johannes Auenmüller
Online via Zoom
04:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Johannes Auenmüller (Museo Egizio, Turin) talks about "The Display of Social Relations and Dependencies: Case Studies from Pharaonic Egypt". -- The discourse ...
In the Grip of the Supernatural
Online via Zoom
03:30 PM
The Conference is looking to explore the connection between the phenomenon of dependency and the realm of the supernatural (God, angels, demons) in late ...
Annual Conference "Embodied Dependencies"
Online via Zoom
Whole Day
The conference “Embodied Dependencies” of Research Area B intends to approach the material evidence of asymmetrical dependencies by examining “embodied ...
The Art of Healing
Online via Zoom
04:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Next Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture Series on September 13, 2021, by Manuel Barcia Paz, University of Leeds.
The Early Slave Trade
Online via Zoom
04:00 PM - 06:00 PM
The next Joseph C. Miller Lecture Series on September 6, 2021, by David Wheat, Michigan State University.
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