Welcome to the Cluster of Excellence at the
Bonn Center for Dependency & Slavery Studies
"Beyond Slavery and Freedom:
Asymmetrical Dependencies in Pre-Modern Societies"
We are a research cluster within the framework of the Excellence Strategy of the German federal and state governments.
We investigate profound social dependencies such as slavery, serfdom, debt bondage, and other forms of permanent dependency across epochs, regions and cultures.
Our focus lies "beyond slavery and freedom", i.e. we aim to overcome the binary opposition of "free" and "unfree".
Instead, we propose the new key concept of "asymmetrical dependency" to explore all forms of bondages across time and space.
Thank you all for a successful year 2022!
We would like to thank everyone for their commitment to and support of the cluster's activities. We hope you have happy and peaceful holidays.
Debt Bondage
Watch what playwright Natassa Sideri thinks about our reading and discussion evening on her play "Gefesselt"
Women's emanciption and Jewish assimilation
"All they wanted was to study..." exhibition opening at Frauenmuseum Bonn
BCDSS Postdoctoral Researcher Viola Müller has just published her article "How some enslaved Black people stayed in Southern slaveholding states – and found freedom" about fugitive slaves in cities of the US South as a parallel story to the much better known Underground Railroad.
To read the full article, click here.
The deadline is extended to March 1st, 2023, to submit an abstract for the international conference on September 7–8, 2023 at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, organized by the research group The Archaeology of Dependency (ArchDepth): Resources, Power and Status Differentiation (Christian Mader, Claire Conrad, and Tamia Viteri Toledo).
Join us for the presentation and discussion of the first two monographs in our De Gruyter book series Dependency and Slavery Studies on Friday, March 3rd, at 14:00-16:00 CET.
Formerly held on Wednesdays, the new Friday Fellows and Alumni Seminars provide first hand insight into current research projects by BCDSS Fellows and Alumni. Now open to the general public, the aim is to make the Cluster’s scholarly work more visible nationally and internationally, and to promote a dialogue between our BCDSS scholars and the wider public.
The Zentrum für Religion und Gesellschaft (ZERG) will host a presentation of BCDSS member Prof. Dr. Julia Hillner's latest book.
We are very pleased to announce the launch of the Library of Ancient Slavery at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies!
Contact Us
Managing Director: Jeannine Bischoff
Email: dependency@uni-bonn.de
Press and PR Manager: Cécile Jeblawei
Email:pr@dependency.uni-bonn.de
Address
University of Bonn
Niebuhrstraße 5
53113 Bonn