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.

Annual Event Series on Gender and Intersectionality

 "Magdalena More's Complaint." In Journal of Moravian History

This workshop traces alternative Maroon worlds and worldviews along two specific lines of inquiry, ecology and imagination. Convening scholars from across disciplines (including geography, archaeology, anthropology, literary history and sound studies), we will probe the different environmental and cultural contexts of Marronage. Our goal is to engage with Marronage as an ecological, political and creative practice, underlining how Black ways of engaging with the environment provide a conceptual and practical reorientation to anthropogenic climate change.

Congratulations to PhD Researcher David B. Smith, whose article "'An Open Wound in the Body…' A 'Dependency Turn' in Ecumenical Discourse on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery" has just been published in The Ecumenical Review.

We are pleased to announce that our Tour of Roman Bonn now has its own website - the World of Roman Bonn!

June 12 marks the 'World Day Against Child Labor'. It aims to catalyze the growing global effort to eliminate child labor.

Researchers at the BCDSS work with and on visual material in their research on slaveries and dependencies. In this roundtable, a curator, an artist, and several researchers from the BCDSS will talk about visuality and dependency.

By PhD Researcher Ricardo Márquez García together with Nanette Snoep, Vera Marušić and Lydia Hauth

Organized by Eva Marie Lehner (BCDSS) and Hanna te Velde (IISH)

We are pleased to announce that the renowned philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah will give a guest lecture at the BCDSS on 27 June 2024 titled "Identities in History." Appiah's lecture will be based on his latest book The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity (2018).

The scholarship on transatlantic slavery has long benefited from the often-exhaustive data published in the fugitive slave archive. Ubiquitous throughout the transatlantic world, fugitive slave advertisements were commonly placed by enslavers seeking to recapture enslaved people who resisted through flight. Such notices commonly provided specific, invasive detail about an enslaved person’s body, dress, skills, languages, and even gestures and mannerisms. Although enslaved females standardly comprised a smaller percentage of runaways, nevertheless, the fugitive notices that do exist for female freedom seekers shed light on their lives and experiences. Through an examination of the fugitive slave archive and other sources, this lecture seeks to fill some of the scholarly gaps on the experiences of enslaved females of African descent in Canada. More specifically, it will offer some distinctions between the lives and experiences of enslaved females in slave minority (temperate) and slave majority (tropical) sites in the British transatlantic world.

BCDSS' Translator & Academic Editor Imogen Herrad and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Coordinator Dima Al Munajed will host this workshop for the University of Bonn's Diversity Days 2024.

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. 

The newest issue of the Journal of Global Slavery includes the Special Issue “Beyond Slavery and Freedom?”, edited by BCDSS members Pia Wiegmink and Jutta Wimmler. The Special Issue demonstrates the variety of research done at the cluster. The Introduction is available as open access.

Congratulations to Michael Zeuske, Principal Investigator at the BCDSS, who authored the chapter "Migration, Slavery and Commodification" in The Oxford Handbook of Commodity History!