Events Archive
How can the historical and geographic location of Cape Town, perched at the literal hinge of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, reframe our understanding of creolisation? As a former Dutch East India Company (VOC) settlement, Cape Town is deeply layered with the legacies of unfree labor and diasporas from across both ocean worlds. This lecture with Ananya Jahanara Kabir, explores the Cape as a vital transoceanic site to examine how creolisation manifests in diverse creative expressions, from Longarm dancing and Cape Malay foodways to the Afrikaans language and the contemporary visual art of Thania Petersen. Ultimately, She suggests that retrieving these memories of creolisation offers an anti-hegemonic resource for resistance, resilience, and community-building today.
For centuries, slavery constituted a fundamental component of Ottoman society, shaping households, labor regimes, political structures, and social hierarchies across the empire. Yet recent scholarship has increasingly emphasized that slavery in the Ottoman world cannot be understood as a singular institution. Rather, enslaved and dependent individuals experienced diverse forms of unfreedom that varied according to gender, legal status, occupation, religion, geographic setting, and access to social networks. These differences challenge binary distinctions between freedom and slavery and call for a more nuanced understanding of dependency and agency in Ottoman history. The conference Ottoman Slaveries and Typologies of Unfreedom brings together scholars from different disciplines to examine the plurality of Ottoman slaveries and related forms of dependency.
How do workers form and shape places and spaces of re/production in today’s capitalism? This is the central question of the recently published book “Arbeitswelten” (Doutch/Engelhardt/López/Premchander/Wenner, 2026) that introduces perspectives of Labour Geography as a distinct, critical lens within German-speaking academia. The edited volume centres around the everyday lives of workers in contested worlds of labour and offers a holistic, reflexive view of labour as both subject and actor. Thereby this first comprehensive Labour Geography collection in German-speaking academia opens and invites interdisciplinary dialogue. At the book launch, Anne Engelhardt and Michaela Doutch, two of the editors, first introduce and frame the volume’s overarching contribution, while Benjamin Etzold and the editors themselves spotlight their respective chapters, illustrating the merits (and pitfalls) of Labour Geography as a critical research perspective.
On the remote Pacific Coast of Colombia, the people of Yurumanguí palenque in Colombia have a 300-year chain of struggle stretching back to Africa. With their semi-autonomous territory invaded by armed groups, and threatened by external environmental destruction, they are still fighting for liberty hundreds of years after their ancestors fled enslavement. Film director and former BCDSS fellow Emma Christopher and fellow director and photographer Sergio Seiglie follow a group that is heading to Petronio Álvarez, the biggest Afro-Colombian music festival and competition, to perform their songs advocating for peace and to draw attention to the continued struggles of their communities. Join us for the Film Screening and Discussion of "Viva Yurumanguí" (2026) by Emma Christopher and Sergio Leyva Seiglie at Brotfabrik in Bonn. From 18:30, we'll have drinks and snacks, followed by the screening of Viva Yurumanguí (OmU) at 19:00, and concluding with the talk at 20:30.
Conference: "Children, Dependency, and Emotions in the Early Modern World, 1500-1800: Archival and Visual Narratives" Throughout history children have been subjected to violence, coercion, forced labor and separation. Children also developed strategies to cope with their oftentimes deplorable living conditions. This conference is interested in the archival, visual, and material traces some of these children have left - aiming at reconstructing social and emotional worlds of children in early modern global history. For the full program, see the link below.
In recent times, research has increasingly focused on the previously often neglected phenomena of transition from violence and war to peacemaking and peace consolidation. The thematic contexts and spatial and chronological contexts of such studies are extremely diverse, as are the terms typically used: Gray areas between peace and war, transformation processes, intermediate worlds, transitions, simultaneity phenomena, reconstruction and post-war periods, Cold War/Cold Peace, "neither/nor", "both/and" - all these paraphrases aim to question the premises of Cicero's classic quote "inter bellum et pacem medium nihil sit" and at the same time accentuate the ideal-typical construct character of "war" and "peace". The aim of the conference is to examine the various transitions from violence/war to peacemaking/consolidation across epochs in a specific area, namely the Rhenish region.
This conference "Romani Feminisms: Intersectionality in the Context of Dependencies" aims to support and elevate the work of Romani women feminists, breaking the barriers that confine Romani feminisms to the periphery of mainstream spaces. The insights and outcomes from the conference will be disseminated by the Romnja Feminist Library, ensuring a broader impact and continued dialogue on these critical issues.
This workshop offers the opportunity to explore theoretical approaches to intersectionality and their applications in slavery and dependency studies. Guided by four renowned experts in the fields of anthropology (Laurie A. Wilkie, UK Berkeley), theology (Keri L. Day, Princeton), sociology (Zine Magubane, Boston College), and history (Karen Graubart, University of Notre Dame), we will examine how slavery and dependency studies might benefit from a greater emphasis on intersectionality, and how intersectionality theory might profit from research on asymmetrical dependencies. How might the comparative approach employed by researchers at the BCDSS complement classic legal and sociological conceptions of intersectionality that follow along the lines of race, gender, and class? How might both theoretical frameworks be strengthened by a greater emphasis on questions of sexuality, gender identity beyond the binary, (dis)ability, or religious experience in modern and pre-modern societies?
With Sara Eriksson, Sarah Zimmerman, and Natalie Joy, three of this year's BCDSS Fellows will present their personal research projects at the Dies Academicus on 15 May 2024. They will provide interesting insights into their projects and discuss slavery and abolition in different temporal and geographical contexts. Sara Eriksson: "How to do an Archeology of Slavery: A Case Study from Ancient Greece" Prof. Dr. Sarah Zimmerman: "Gender, Slavery, and World Heritage on Gorée Island (Senegal)" Prof. Dr. Natalie Joy: "The Indian’s Cause: Native Americans and the American Antislavery Movement"
In this roundtable, a curator, an artist, and several researchers from the BCDSS will talk about visuality and dependency. It wants to explore the various ways in which visual cultures relate to ideas, institutions, and practices of bondage and their remembrance.
This workshop explores the intersection of archaeology and genetics, the power and complexities of archaeogenetics, a field that's reshaping our understanding of the past, using ancient and modern DNA to understand migration, societal structures, and power dynamics in history.
Why would someone give a human being as a gift? Who are the giver and the taker? How does the gift-giving affect the life and status of the gifted human? The two-day conference "Humans as Gifts" at the University of Bonn in May 2024 will bring historians and anthropologists together to find answers to these question.
How did elite Arab-Muslim households treat unfree women from 600 to 800 CE? Examining mawlayāt, servile women who were not technically enslaved, this talk examines their scarcity, domestic roles, and social networks. It cautions against uncritical reading of sources, which often convey biased messages. Mawlayāt offer insight into power dynamics in early Islamic society, occupying an intermediate position between enslaved and free.
The history of slavery undergoes a massive paradigm shift in recent times. One aspect is how Slavery and Dependency Studies reconceptualize the history of enslavement and human trafficking against the background of strong asymmetrical dependency, such as Leibeigenschaft and serfdom. Comparative perspectives have therefore gained much significance and contributed enormously to the field. At the same time, global history has reached its preliminary peak - time to bring these two strands together as oftentimes scholars do both: case studies and global history. With Paulin Ismard and Benedetta Rossi, the bpb and the BCDSS welcome two of the most outstanding scholars both in the world history of slavery and dependency and comparative history. With Stephan Conermann and Joseph Biggerstaff we will host an intergenerational roundtable, moderated by Claudia Jarzebowski. Please register by June 2, 2024, using the link below.
"Der Müll bleibt. Müssen wir wirklich unaufhörlich natürliche Ressourcen in Konsumgüter umwandeln, die dann schnell entsorgt werden, um Platz für neue Produkte zu schaffen?" Wir freuen uns, Prof. Ulbe Bosma vom International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam wieder bei uns in Bonn begrüßen zu dürfen, nachdem er im letzten Jahr einige Monate bei uns am BCDSS zu Gast war. Alle sind herzlich willkommen. Eintritt ist frei! Bitte melden Sie sich über den Link zur VHS Bonn an (siehe unten). Der Vortrag findet auf Deutsch statt.
We are delighted that Professor Steeve Buckridge (Grand Valley State University, Michigan) will give the keynote lecture "Beyond the Classical Archives: Dress as Embodied Histories, Memory, and Orality in and from the Caribbean". How did dress as a visual language and expressive form of culture articulate differences in slave society? Or how did dress empower or disempower slave women within the colonial plantocracy? The talk aims to demonstrate how dress is parallel to written archival materials and is a source for historical analysis. Find the full abstract below.
In-person event. Please note that all talks are based on papers that have been pre-circulated to speakers. Please register by 15 April via Email to: events@dependency.uni-bonn.de This colloquium examines how and why segregation has been used as a tool for constructing and policing gender boundaries, at the intersection with race, age, status, class, functionality, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, nationality and other historical ideas of human identity and categorization. Segregation is the physical, cultural, or legal separation of groups on the basis of self- or external demarcations of difference and can be observed in many different human societies of the past. This colloquium discusses segregation across time and space as both a framework of control through imposing binary and as an individual coping mechanism and a strategy of subversion.
This workshop aims to shed light on the underlying factors that reinforce the perpetuation of modern-day slavery in Nigeria, with a particular focus on the dynamics of asymmetrical dependency. The analysis begins by examining the historical and socioeconomic antecedents that predispose Nigeria to other forms dependency. These analytical categories such as poverty, corruption, weak governance, and socio-cultural practices have created an environment conducive to the exploitation and enslavement of individuals, particularly women, children, and the less privileged. The complex web of asymmetrical relations and diverse processes of enslavement are reproduced by institutions, beliefs, values and practices that maintain and enforce coercive relationships. The workshop will bring together renowned scholars and PhD students working in the field of asymmetrical dependency to discuss the historical, socioeconomic, and power dynamics at play.
Discover a fascinating journey through time from Titan Arum to Giant Water Lilies, Cocoa to Tea – the history of botanical gardens and the scientific exploration of plant life is closely intertwined with colonial times, a historical aspect often forgotten today. The Botanical Gardens of the University of Bonn also hold colonial traces, as evident in the famous Titan Arum. Max Koernicke brought it to Bonn from Indonesia in 1934, funded by a scholarship from the former Reich Colonial Office, advocating for Germany to expand its colonial territories. During the garden tour, Dr. Cornelia Löhne, Scientific Director of the Botanical Gardens, and Dr. Karin Ladenburger, Green School, will highlight and explain these connections to colonialism, reflecting on their impact on today's society. Join the discussion afterward with Dr. Cornelia Löhne and Paulina Saerbeck from the initiative 'Bonn Postkolonial,' moderated by Alma Hannig, Collection Coordinator of the University of Bonn.
This round table event aims at interrogating the concept of the plantation and incorporate emergent theoretical insight on forms and practices of coerced labor, whether or not situated in the context of agricultural commodity or mineral extraction, which bears similarity to the plantation form. For some time scholars have pointed to the ways plantations in the Global South have been linked to the growth and expansion of modern capitalism at the cost of persistent underdevelopment. In the wake of the global turn, a linear narrative between the Caribbean and Northern Europe is being displaced by a far more decentered history. In turn, there is increasing emphasis on the afterlives of the plantation, from biopolitics to the racialization of labor. You are invited to share your research but are also more than welcome to listen in. If you want to join this round table on plantations and other forms of exploitative mass production, please get in touch with the organizers.
This workshop considers how unequal social and labor relations were entangled with notions of difference between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. Across South Asia during this period, articulations of difference – expressed across multiple registers of discourse and practice – produced and sustained asymmetrical relations and networks of dependencies. Through exploring the interplay of these factors during this period, as well as potential connections or disjunctures with prior and subsequent eras, the workshop hopes to contribute towards developing a comparative framework across distinct contexts from Mughal North India to Portuguese Goa to the Deccan under Maratha rule. Participants will examine how social categories such as caste, gender, origin, and ethnicity intersected with relations of slavery, servitude, and/or service, looking at examples such as military labor, domestic service, and corvée labor.
This international conference will explore asymmetrical dependencies and related phenomena in Latin America from an archaeological point of view. A recent paradigm shift has resulted in the study of diverse forms of dependency across space and time, including colonialism, slavery, political-ideological coercion, coerced tribute, servitude, serfdom, debt bondage, convict labor, indentured migration, labor migration, and forced relocation of groups of laborers. These new research foci also entail the development and application of new theoretical, methodological, and not least data-driven approaches, thereby analyzing and combining various lines of evidence. We intend this conference to be a forum for discussion, bringing together a wide range of perspectives and case studies from different regions and time periods in Latin America.
Throughout modern history, Black writers and activists – George Padmore, Shirley Graham Du Bois, and May Ayim – have pursued radical projects pointing out the lack of basic human rights of marginalized communities. In this talk, Tiffany N. Florvil argues that these individuals and others have drawn upon their cross-cultural experiences to highlight how the intersecting oppressions of racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, and ableism have persisted throughout the twentieth century. Traversing geographical and aesthetic boundaries, these activists and intellectuals advocated for civil, social, and political change in their respective countries and beyond, advancing a cosmopolitan ethos that allowed them to offer new forms of knowledge and instigate change.
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 bring together some of the central debates on the cultural heritage of Afro-descendant slavery in Brazil, and a critical novelty is to propose the analysis of the intersections with the cultural heritage of indigenous slavery. The Brazilian academy is just beginning to explore these possible connections, and the event can be an essential contribution to the debate on the cultural heritage of slavery at the international level by bringing new perspectives. In this sense, the Conference brings together researchers and activists to debate topics on the intersections in the cultural heritage of indigenous and Afro-Brazilian slavery at parties, in the discussion of the last Constitution, in teaching, in filmic narratives, in museums and the politics of Repair.
A comparative conference, organized by Heinz Heinen Fellow Christian Laes, that will enable the audience to pay attention to voices often unheard, in language traditions often unknown, and therefore underexplored. Drawing on the expertise of scholars in ‘less studied languages’ (Armenian, Coptic, Ge’ez, Georgian, Turkish, Syriac) for the period concerned.
Workshop Series and Study Group “Anthropological Perspectives on Embodied Dependencies” Screening & Discussion of the documentary (58 minutes) In this session we will discuss the ways that music-making reflects the intertwined legacies of slavery and indentureship in Trinidad & Tobago. While historical animosities between Indian- and African-Trinidadians continue to fuel political and social divisions in the country, analysis of Trinbagonian music contrarily suggests that Indian- and African-Trinidadians have long exchanged musical ideas such that musics often considered solely “Indian” or “African” are in fact characterized by marked fusions of various styles. In this way, music-making can be read like an archive of colonial and postcolonial intimacies. We will watch the documentary “Sweet Tassa: Music of the Indian Caribbean Diaspora” and discuss it with its director Chris Ballengee, who is an ethnomusicologist based in Poland and scholar of Indo-Caribbean culture.
On 1 December 2025, the new German Court of Arbitration for Nazi-Looted Cultural Property replaced the former German "Advisory Commission". This new Court is a fundamental innovation in the process of restitution of Nazi-looted art under the 1998 Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art. The new Court will decide the case on specially designed substantive rules: the "Assessment Framework for Examining and Deciding on the Treatment of Nazi-looted Property". The Netherlands have also seen significant developments in recent years. The assessment framework was revised following the so-called Kohnstamm Report of 2020 and, just recently, in March 2026, another report with recommendations on the future of "Heirless Jewish Looted art in the NK-collection" was issued. These recent developments in Germany and the Netherlands will be put in comparative perspectives in a panel discussion with Dr. Tabitha Oost (University of Amsterdam) and Prof. Dr. Matthias Weller (University of Bonn).
What can microhistory reveal that Big History cannot? Drawing on studies of enslaved and free people in revolutionary and abolitionist France, Sue Peabody explores how focusing on individual subaltern lives reshapes historians’ questions and uncovers new perspectives within the imperial archive.
What is Black Event Theory (BET)? This opening lecture introduces BET from the ground up: its philosophical foundations, its departure from conventional ontology, and its insistence that Blackness is not a problem to be solved but a structure of being to be thought. Beginning with the temporal rupture at the heart of The Door of No Return: Being-as-Black, and an ambition to respond to the thinking of Toni Morrison, we establish the tripartite framework of Cognition, Consciousness, and Being that organizes the theory before asking what it means to originate a philosophical system from the site of the Middle Passage rather than from the traditions that sought to make the world before it unthinkable.
How does the Devadasi tradition stay active despite being declared illegal in India? In his lecture, Indranil Acharya will explore the inescapable dependency of the Devadasis on the temple priests, patrons or the influential members of their own community.
Is it true that Global Value Chains (GVCs) 'boost incomes, create better jobs, and reduce poverty', as commonly claimed? In this upcoming lecture Benjamin Selwyn will discuss his new book, co-authored with Christin Bernhold, which challenges this mainstream view by introducing the concept of Capitalist Value Chains (CVCs).
What happens when the end of the slave trade doesn't lead to freedom, but to a new form of bondage? In our next lecture with Jake Subryan Richards, he will explore the findings of The Bonds of Freedom: Liberated Africans and the End of the Slave Trade (Yale University Press, 2025). Based on a decade of research across four continents, this study uncovers the "forgotten" history of individuals intercepted by maritime patrols and “liberated”, only to be coerced into years of forced labor to "repay" the costs of their own rescue. By examining archival records from Sierra Leone to Brazil and the United States, he analyzes the tension between imperial authoritarianism and the lived experiences of the African diaspora. A challenge to our understanding of emancipation that will examine how empires redefined "freedom" to suit their own economic and political needs.
How did Black symbolism become central to European apothecary culture? This lecture with Temitope Fagunwa, argues that this imagery resulted from three interconnected factors: the medieval Mediterranean spice trade, the transmission of Arabic and Greek pharmaceutical knowledge, and the cosmopolitan court of Frederick II in Sicily. By linking the material flow of goods like pepper and myrrh to the translation of scholarly texts and Hohenstaufen heraldry, this study identifies a medieval origin for symbols often misattributed to later eras. Ultimately, it fills a historiographical gap by connecting the history of science with the material and symbolic traditions of European commerce.
How does statelessness turn people into ‘bare’ or even ‘subhuman’ life? This upcoming lecture with Nasir Uddin, argues that the shift from statelessness to refugeehood is not linear but mediated by extreme violence, using the Rohingya as a case study. Drawing on the 2017 genocidal violence in Myanmar and its aftermath, it shows how the Rohingya, denied citizenship by Myanmar and recognition by Bangladesh, now live in conditions of protracted displacement, insecurity, and exclusion in Bangladesh’s borderlands, exemplifying life treated as less than human.
Is manumission truly a transition to complete independence? While we usually view "slave" and "free" as absolute states, historical evidence of partial manumission suggests otherwise. Spanning from Neo-Babylonia to early modern Cuba, records show individuals being freed only in "parts," remaining half-bound to their owners. Though treated as a matter of fact, this status created significant legal friction over how to manage a person who was simultaneously property and a free agent. This upcoming lecture by Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, will examine the origins of partial manumission, the legal paradoxes it created, and its surprising persistence across diverse cultures.
How did ancient slavery function outside the shadow of the Atlantic trade? While modern scholarship often uses recent history as a universal template, ancient slaving is best understood on its own terms rather than through a Western lens. This upcoming lecture explores three specific areas where pre-modern slave societies differ from modern ones: the immediate proximity to captive-taking, the complex integration of enslaved persons into the family unit, and their primary role as symbolic objects of power.
How did late-nineteenth-century Brazilian thinkers, working within a “Naturalistic Scientism” shaped by positivist and evolutionist theories, represent race and slavery in ways that ranged from claims of Black inferiority to calls for moral reparation, and how did the paternalistic normalization of slavery obscure racial hierarchies and sustain asymmetrical dependencies compared to the more overt racialization seen in the United States?
Beyond chattel slavery, who really built the global plantation complex? This lecture takes a global, longue durée approach, challenging the assumption that plantations relied solely on chattel slavery. Randy M. Browne reveals that planters were insidiously flexible, extracting labor from a wide variety of coerced workers, including convicts, indentured servants, and nominally free wage laborers across the Americas, the Indian Ocean, and Australia. What united these workers was the shared experience of forced migration, dispossession, and crushing violence.
What happens when 125,000 Chinese indentured men and enslaved African men and women work side by side on Cuban sugar plantations in the late nineteenth century? Nowhere else in history did these groups of unfree laborers meet in the same time and place. This unique encounter raises questions about race, class, and gender: Were the Chinese considered black or white, slave or free? How did the absence of Chinese women shape relations between Asians and Africans? Ultimately, were the Chinese “coolies” slaves like their black co-workers, or did they move toward freedom? This lecture explores these questions through key Cuban archival documents.
What does 50 years of Angolan independence really mean? This lecture revisits Angola’s complex history beyond nationalist or Western narratives, exploring how power, memory, and freedom intertwine. Using Palimpsest and Puzzle as tools, it reimagines Angola’s past and present through multiple perspectives.