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. In May 2025, we were awarded a further seven years of funding by the German Research Foundation. Hence, as of January 2026, we will be starting our SECOND FUNDING PERIOD (2026-2032).

Outlook & Information (2026–2032)

Vacancies / Calls (2026–2032)

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.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Publications

Videos & Recordings

BCDSS 2024: A Year in Highlights

Bild © Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies / YouTube

BCDSS 2024: A Year in Highlights

2024 was filled with milestones. Watch our highlights video to see what we accomplished together – thank you for being part of our journey!

Enmeshed & Entwined: FABRICS OF DEPENDENCY

Bild © Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies / YouTube

BCDSS exhibition launches digitally!

What can textiles – coarse cloth or fine silks, work and household linen, clothes in different styles and fashions – tell us about different forms of dependency: enslavement, serfdom, forced labour, or in our own day, factory work in the Global South?

Visit our digital exhibition ‘Enmeshed and Entwined: Fabrics of Dependency/Verstrickt und Verwoben: Texturen der Abhängigkeit’ and let our "quilted narratives" help you explore these and further questions.

BCDSS Blog

Side A, Side B: How Mozambican Oral History Archives Expand Our Understanding of Legal History
Aug 11, 2025
BILGI - BONN History Graduate Conference 9-10 May 2025
Jul 07, 2025
More…

News

Out Now: DEPENDENT, Issue 11, Focusing on Archives

We are pleased to announce that Issue 11 of our Cluster Magazine DEPENDENT on "Archives – Tracing Dependencies through Archival Research" is now available both online and in print. This edition explores archives not as passive repositories, but as dynamic, contested spaces where power, resistance, and memory intersect.

International Silent Film Festival 2025 - Lecture by Anna May Wong

As part of the supporting program of the International Silent Film Festival (7–17 August 2025) in Bonn, we warmly invite you to a lecture and Q&A by cultural scholar Yumin Li. In her talk, Li shares her research on the remarkable international film career of Show Life (German: "Song") actress Anna May Wong (1905–1961). Li highlights the importance of the Chinese-American actress as a pioneer in film history. As the first Hollywood star of Chinese heritage, Anna May Wong is today seen a symbol of self-empowerment.

Research Grant for PhD Researcher Diego Schibelinski

We are thrilled to announce that the research project, "Sailing a Hidden Atlantic: Slave Ship Crews during the Age of Abolition (1807–1867)," by our PhD researcher Diego Schibelinski has just been awarded a €6,000 grant, chosen from over 115 submissions! This funding will support his upcoming stay in London, where he’ll be diving into original materials at the National Archives, Kew. His work explores the untold stories of the men who crewed slave ships, especially those voyaging to Brazil during the final decades of the trade. Rather than treating the ship just as a vessel, he sees it as a workplace and living community: a place where early capitalist labor regimes, including coerced and commodified labor, intersected in complex ways. Using Labor History and Social History methods, he aims to recover who these crew members were, how they were treated under systems of illegality, and how they navigated life and labor under brutal conditions.

New Publication by Diego Schibelinski

Congratulations to PhD Researcher Diego Schibelinski, whose chapter on "Freedom and Slavery among Seafarers in Coastal Navigation (Santa Catarina, 19th Century)" (original: "Liberdade e escravidão entre os marítimos na navegação de cabotagem (Santa Catarina, século XIX")) has just been published in the book Gentes do mar: problemas, personagens e ambientes em estudo da historiografia brasileira, edited by J. Rodrigues.

DEI Certificate Award to David Brandon Smith

Congratulations to David Brandon Smith, who is the first one to complete the DEI Certificate offered by the BCDSS.

"Archaeology and language dynamics in the medieval and early modern eras"

Congratulations to BCDSS postdoctoral researcher James M. Harland, member and representative ofResearch Area E - Gender (and Intersectionality) on his new co-authored Article together with Mark Hudson and Alison Crowther.

Long Dureé Approaches to the Global Plantation Complex

The Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS) is accepting applications for an upcoming workshop on the global history of plantations, which will take place in November 2025. This interdisciplinary event will bring together Ph.D. candidates and early-career researchers to explore the historical evolution and global impact of plantation systems from late antiquity through the early modern era.

New Publication: Special Issue of 'Body and Society' edited by Sinah Kloß and Antonia Villinger

Congratulations to BCDSS Research Group Leader Dr. Sinah Kloß and Antonia Villinger (Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg), on editing the special issue of the journal Body and Society titled 'Pregnant Bodies: Embodied Pregnancy.'

All News Items

Events

Thursday Sep 18, 2025 until Sep 19, 2025

Knowledge Dependencies and the Un/Making of Equitable Futures

Tulpenfeld 6, 53113 Bonn

Whole Day

Amid escalating geopolitical instability, authoritarian retrenchments, and the deepening securitisation of knowledge-making, this conference critically ...

Friday Sep 26, 2025

Workshop Elite Women and Systems of Dependency in Late Antiquity

Niebuhrstraße 5, 53113 ...

09:00 AM - 06:00 PM

The purpose of this workshop is to analyse and discuss the underexplored gendered dynamics of asymmetrical dependencies in which Late Antique elite women and ...

Monday Oct 20, 2025

Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Ann R. David

HYBRID event: On site ...

04:15 PM - 05:45 PM

How has Western morality reshaped Indian ideas of the body and performance? This research explores how colonial and postcolonial ideologies impacted Indian ...

Monday Nov 10, 2025

Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Christian Cwik

HYBRID event: On site in ...

04:15 PM - 05:45 PM

Before transatlantic slavery, European colonial powers used contract workers. After Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807/08, they sought new markets, ...

All Events

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Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS)

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