During her lifetime, Emma Kolbe/Forsayth/Farrell (née Coe), known as ‘Queen Emma of New Guinea’, was one of the most powerful private individuals and economically successful entrepreneurs in the Pacific – a woman of colour in a world dominated by men. Owning more than 60,000 hectares of plantations in New Britain, New Ireland, Bougainville and various smaller islands (a region later occupied by the German Empire), Emma Kolbe traded not only in copra, cotton and other natural produce but also people – for whose transport she also maintained ships.
Using the figure of Queen Emma and her networks as a starting point, this international workshop seeks to examine gendered lives on plantations as well as practices of coerced labour and forced migration.
The workshop will be jointly held at the University of Bonn and the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum (RJM), Cologne on June 17-19, 2026. It is organized by Prof. Dr. Pia Wiegmink (BCDSS) and Dr. Oliver Lueb (RJM) and is part of the ARC project “Unfreedom, Voices, Redress: Plantation Cultures of the Western Pacific.“