With a sense of nostalgia in hindsight and excitement about what lies ahead, the first chapter is coming to a close. We therefore asked: What will you take away from BCDSS? What were your highlights?

Here are the answers from a wide range of outstanding researchers.

How do you envisage incorporating the theory of (strong) asymmetrical dependency into your future academic work?

Leon Kaplan

(Predoctoral Researcher and former MA Student)

Photo by Barbara Frommann

“Overcoming the binary opposition of slavery versus freedom is intricately linked to questions of agency. As asymmetrical dependencies – particularly, but not exclusively, slavery – always involve the control of people’s actions and access to resources, this necessarily means a restriction of their agency, although this can never be total. Agency must therefore be understood as socially situated, rather than a matter of free choice. As my research project deals with slave suicide, this raises difficult but important questions, such as whether it is possible to interpret suicide both as an expression of agency and a response to oppressive social conditions marked by a lack of options.”

My keywords: Interdisciplinary - International - Transformative

Paul Graf

(Postdoctoral Researcher and former PhD Researcher)

Photo by Barbara Frommann

“I plan to continue investigating the various aspects of asymmetrical dependency in my future research, including my main field of interest, Mesoamerican studies and Anthropology of the Americas, but also in other historical and contemporary contexts. In preparing my postdoctoral project, for example, I am implementing a new perspective on relationships of asymmetrical dependency in the form of social integration. Furthermore, I am interested in exploring further the outcome of my PhD thesis on asymmetrical dependency over the control of essential resources, since I think that it is very topical and can be applied in different social and political contexts.”

My keywords: Cohesive PhD cohorts - Collaborative research - Inspiring research field

Darlan Paulo Lorenzetti

(Postdoctoral Guest Researcher, Brazil, National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq/Brazil) Grant)

Photo by Darlan Lorenzetti

“My future academic projects are committed to a deep understanding of the role played by slavery in the history of the Latin American continent and a consolidation of a critical awareness of such structures. A meticulous examination of the philosophical-theological foundations of the ideology of slavery in Colonial Latin America is a fundamental step towards understanding the logics of dependency, domination and asymmetry on which their societies were historically built. Many of these structures of oppression unfortunately remain as power relations and in phenomena such as racism, social inequality, precarious working conditions and limited access to basic social rights.”

My keywords: Challenge - Connection - Innovation

Marion Gymnich

(Principal Investigator and former Co-Speaker)

Photo by Barbara Frommann

“Research in the Cluster has shown that strong asymmetrical dependency is a concept that leads to new insights across disciplines. This is definitely also true for my field, English literary and cultural studies, where it serves as an eye-opener in many areas beyond the study of texts by and/or about formerly enslaved people. It invites us to re-read many classics of English and Anglophone literature and it may even make us aware of patterns and underlying assumptions in today’s popular culture, from the Young Adult dystopia to fantasy fiction – two of the genres in whose imaginary societies strong asymmetrical dependencies are omnipresent.”

My keywords: Innovation - Networks - Inspiration

Ishita Sarkar

(MA Student)

Photo by Ishita Sarkar

“I applied for the Masters Program at the BCDSS from a place of personal motivation to historically, culturally and scientifically explore the functioning of the institutions of caste and untouchability in India. But I am extremely pleased to say that, not only did the BCDSS help me to engage myself with a myriad of international discourses on caste and untouchability, but it also pushed my theoretical and methodological boundaries towards a vast range of other epistemic concepts, such as archival silencing, epistemic violence, visual cultures of dependency such as in photography, art and sculpture and not to mention, intersectionality and feminism in histories of oppression. Specifically, the classes with Prof. Dr. Pia Wiegmink and Prof. Dr. Claudia Jarzebowski had been intensely engaging for me as they have always inspired me to have an opinion, taught me self-reflexivity and made me believe that combining the personal and the academic, especially in feminist history, can indeed be a productive approach after all.”

My keywords: Feminism - Caste - Epistemic violence

Jaiannantpreet Singh

(MA Student)

Photo by Jaiannantpreet Singh

“Although not completely an academic work, I strongly believe that the understanding of asymmetrical dependency will help me explore the situation of my community within India, economically, socially as well as psychologically. This highly imbalanced and deep entanglement with the state could be the root cause of many fundamental problems within my (Sikh) community, from poverty, exploitation to mass migration of youth. One of the ways to fight the unjust is to expose it, and that's exactly where the theory of asymmetrical dependency can be helpful.”

My keywords: Possibility - Commitment - Learning

Ezequiel Mariano T. Costa

(Guest Researcher, Brazil, DAAD/CDEA Fellowship)

Photo by Ezequiel Mariano T. Costa

“The theory of asymmetrical dependency is central to my ongoing research on eugenics and racialized hierarchies in Latin America. It provides a conceptual lens to understand how colonial structures of knowledge and power persist in shaping social and institutional dependencies. In my future work, I aim to expand this perspective through the concept of “Amefricagenics,” analyzing how dependency operates not only economically but also symbolically, psychologically, and epistemically. This approach bridges legal theory, history, and race studies, reinforcing a critical dialogue in the Global South.”

My keywords: Dependency - Eugenics - Decoloniality

Bernardo Bonifácio Ferreira

(Guest Researcher, DAAD/CDEA Grant)

Photo by BCDSS

“In my research, I investigate algorithmic racism as an expression of the structural inequalities embedded in technological design and data infrastructures. Drawing on the theory of asymmetric dependency, I will analyse how technologies based on artificial intelligence reproduce historical legacies of exclusion and epistemic asymmetries. These systems transform social and political relations into sociotechnical impacts, maintaining dependencies between data, power, and visibility. This perspective demonstrates that digital technologies are not neutral but are products of historical processes that shape new forms of hierarchy and control.”

My keywords: Inspiration - Collaboration - Transformation

What has been a significant highlight of your time at the BCDSS?

Dima Al Munajed

(DEI Coordinator)

Photo by Barbara Frommann

“Celebrating with everyone the BCDSS’s successful application for a second phase last May. I personally learned a lot from the application experience, and saw first-hand what collective effort can do. Celebrating was the tip of the iceberg, but what is unforgettable is the vast amount of preparation that goes into it, the required group effort, working dynamics of such a large team, combining perspectives, accepting feedback and using it to make the application stronger, dealing with months of stress, pulling through and supporting each other throughout, and then so much relief, joy and a communal sense of pride and achievement.”

My keywords: Dynamic work environment - Feeling valued - Connected to the team

Pia Wiegmink

(BCDSS Professor and Co-Speaker)

Photo by Barbara Frommann

“I have fond memories of the Working Group “Life Writing, Slavery and Dependency.” To me, the cluster is more than the sum of the individual researcher’s accomplishments and the WG’s joint reading and discussion of diverse forms of life writing produced in contexts of dependency – for example, twelfth-century Tibet, the early modern Persianate world, eighteenth-century imperial Russia, Moldavia, and Mali, nineteenth-century Sierra Leone, Chile, Brazil, the US and the Caribbean – is but one example of the joy of collaborative research. In many of our monthly sessions I had “interdisciplinary epiphanies” – wonderful moments in which scholars’ different perspectives and expertise yielded fascinating results. Thank you!”

My keywords: Life writing - Interdisciplinary epiphany (or: interdisciplinarity) - Collaboration

Elena Smolarz

(Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer)

Photo by Barbara Frommann

“Looking back on my time at the BCDSS, I am most grateful for the successful, fruitful and appreciative interdisciplinary cooperation within Research Area A. Our discussions on established academic concepts of dependency and forced mobility, related emic terms and the possibilities and limitations of translating them greatly enriched the development of my research topics and methodological approach. Working in the “Life Writing” group broadened my knowledge of experienced and narrated dependency in various textual and regional contexts.

I would like to express my sincere thanks to Pia Wiegmink, Jutta Wimmler, Jennifer Leetsch, and all the members of Research Area A for these valuable experiences.”

My keywords: Research - Teaching - Interdisciplinarity

Mercy Mashingaidze

(Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer)

Photo by Barbara Frommann

“Seeing one of the MA students whose Master’s thesis I actively co-supervised being awarded the ‘BCDSS Student Award for Outstanding MA Thesis’.”

My keywords: Motivating - Team-oriented - Inclusivity

Vital Byl

(Postdoctoral Researcher, DFG Research Grant)

Photo by Vital Byl

“The period when my project was hosted by the BCDSS contributed greatly to my scholarship but also to my self-reflection and sense of identity. The SAD framework prompted me to reflect on my own experiences of dependency and on my ancestors — Belarusian serfs. Almost magnetically, this reflection led to an exciting discovery: during my archival research in Warsaw, I came across a 200-year-old document recording the purchase of my serf ancestors by a local lord. My grandfather still came from the very village where they had been resettled. It was a magical moment — an intersection between scholarship and personal history.”

My keywords: Self-reflection - Discovery - Entanglement

Josef Köstlbauer

(Postdoctoral Researcher)

Photo by Barbara Frommann

“During my time at the BCDSS, I particularly enjoyed the atmosphere of intellectual camaraderie and mutual support. Especially in the working groups, I experienced inspiring and amicable collaboration across disciplinary borders and this was of immense help in furthering my own research on historical semantics of dependency. There were many memorable moments, both on and off campus. One that I will never forget, was sitting in a beer garden on a fine June evening under the canopy of a huge old tree, with the whole group listening to a colleague speak in the birdsong-like Yucatec Maya language.”

My keywords: Intellectual camaraderie - Historical semantics of dependency - Collaboration

Jaiannantpreet Singh

(MA Student)

Photo by Jaiannantpreet Singh

“Last Winter Semester (24/25), I took a seminar on Digital Humanities which provided me with an excellent opportunity to not just learn and understand different digital tools but also to apply them in real world. As a part of this course, we were supposed to develop and present our own project using some of the tools we learnt. For this purpose, I chose one of the saddest chapters of Sikh History, "the Operation Blue Star," a military attack on the holiest shrine of Sikh community. The plan was to map out the casualties that took place during this massacre and close to the 41st mark of this, I was able to provide my professor as well as fellow classmates with a glimpse of the horror. Thanks to the course, I was able to convert names of around 633 people into a digital map with their location of death as well as status (civilian/fighter). This is a significant highlight as it helped me to pay a small tribute and provided me with the opportunity to do something meaningful instead of just looking at the numbers, events and being sorry.”

My keywords: Possibility - Commitment - Learning

Ipek Kayaalp

(MA Student)

Photo by Ipek Kayaalp

“As a student who previously studied English Literature, I was familiar with some of the concepts that the BCDSS explores under asymmetrical dependencies within only an English context. The thing that I find the most precious about the BCDSS is that it is not only multidisciplinary, but it also explores the concept of dependency through a wide spatial and temporal lens. A good example of this for me is the Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture Series. These lectures were always interesting as they brought attention to sometimes overlooked topics, and had the potential to create sparks of new-found research interests for us students.”

My keywords: Multidisciplinary - JCMM Lectures - Multifocality

Sonia Tesfaye Abebe

(MA Student)

Photo by Sonia Tesfaye Abebe

“A significant highlight of my time with the BCDSS was engaging with the Benin Bronzes during our visit to the Humboldt Museum in Berlin, as well as experiencing the curation of Cameron Rowland’s Amt 45i at the Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK) in Frankfurt. These encounters deepened my curiosity about diverse epistemological virtues, curatorial practices, and the spiritual and sacred dimensions of artifacts, particularly how they travel across time and space, carry memory, and embody contested histories.

The lessons we received enabled me to trace historical timelines while meaningfully connecting them to academic research. I deeply appreciated the care invested in creating a space where we could explore knowledge through our own lenses and draw upon our lived experiences. Moreover, sharing this journey with my classmates was profoundly enriching.”

My keywords: Voice - Collective - Future

Alex Maasen

(MA Student)

Photo by Alex Maasen

“The most significant highlight about my studies was the different ways that each professor approached their classes. It made each class unique while still covering similar topics. It was also my highlight to really work through an idea in one class while applying what other classes had taught me as well. I was able to come out with a truly deeper meaning of any text, and I felt like I had come to that conclusion naturally.“

My keywords: Enriching - Enhancing - Empowering

Luvena Kopp

(Postdoctoral Researcher and former PhD Researcher)

Photo by Tim Wulf

“I am grateful for the experience of co-organizing the annual Juneteenth Lecture at the BCDSS. Introduced a year after Juneteenth became a federal holiday in the US, this lecture, to me, demonstrates the close relationship between research and politics. The cutting-edge lectures by up-and-coming or internationally renowned scholars in the study of black liberation and art – such as Tiffany Florvil’s talk on black radical histories, Charmaine Nelson’s interpretation of fugitive slave ads from Canada, and Kinohi Nishikawa’s presentation of Toni Morrison’s late style – deeply inspired me and always allowed me to view my own research in a new light. I also recall exciting one-on-ones with speakers before and after their talks, such as an animated conversation with Nishikawa about the Black German movement on a hot day in the 66 train as we are heading to the venue.
I thank both the BCDSS and the cooperation partners, the AmerikaHaus NRW and the North American Studies Program at Bonn, for holding on to this fine event, especially at a time when black memories and knowledges are systematically targeted.”

My keywords: Juneteenth - Black knowledges - Cooperation

With this last post of Phase 1, we would like to inform you that there won’t be any regular blog posts in 2026. However, individual posts may be published at irregular intervals. We hope that, from 2027 onwards, the new PhD cohorts will continue this project on a regular basis. So, look out for news!

We want to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has contributed. We can’t thank you enough for your contributions, which have made this blog what it is: a window into our work and a glimpse behind the scenes.

Finally, we wish all former and future members and fellows of the BCDSS all the best for their academic careers and beyond.

- The Dependency Blog Editorial Team

As a result of reading around the topic of social network analysis, I became increasingly interested in the role of intermediaries—individuals who occupied positions between the powerful and the powerless—in shaping the churches of Visigothic Iberia. These figures often remain unnamed in the sources and, as minor clergy or enslaved individuals, they were tied into dependent relationships with bishops, on whom they relied on for appointment, salaries, promotion, or – in the case of the enslaved – potential manumission. Despite their subordinate positions, the actions of these people were crucial to the functioning and expansion of the Church in Iberia and beyond.

Isidore of Seville (d. 636), a towering intellectual figure of the period most well-known for writing the Etymologies, a monumental work of reference that became one of the most widely-copied texts of the Middle Ages, is a telling example. In his correspondence with Bishop Braulio of Zaragoza, Isidore frequently mentions the intermediaries who carried letters between them. Some of these people were clerics, others may have been enslaved as in the case of the puer who carried a Letter B from Isidore to Braulio. Another letter refers to unnamed “servants” – potentially enslaved individuals – who were involved in the misfiling of correspondence (Letter III).

Interestingly, Braulio does not mention couriers or other intermediaries in his letters, suggesting variation in epistolary practice and perhaps differing attitudes toward intermediaries. Nonetheless, although Isidore refers to these messengers, apart from a cleric called Maurentiu (Letter A), he did not name them.

In order to dig into this further, during my time in Bonn, I learnt how to conduct social network analysis. I thought it could be an interesting means of identifying and analysing ecclesiastical intermediaries on a system-wide basis. I began by looking at Braulio’s collection of 44 letters, the largest to survive from Visigothic Iberia. The first image is one of my first efforts at making a social network visualisation of Braulio’s letters (don’t look too closely – it was a start, if not a particularly effective one). Note the correspondence between Braulio and Isidore, represented by the thick line at the bottom of the diagram. This reflects the fact that the seven letters exchanged between Braulio and Isidore were the most between any pair of individuals in the corpus (hence the thicker line).

But when I reflected on what the thick line between Braulio and Isidore actually meant and went back to re-read the letters, I realised that the visualisation somewhat misrepresented what was going on. It ignored the intermediaries. So, I made this little diagram to represent the individual letters and the role of the letter carriers and other people mentioned in process.

The multiple thin lines don’t necessarily give us a more “realistic” representation of the correspondence than the thicker line that had been bothering me, but it did enable me to put the intermediaries into the picture. It also helped me to realise that alongside the attested messengers there must have been other individuals who carried the other letters between Braulio and Isidore but who were not mentioned (designated with “anon.” on the image). This is not to say that the seven Braulio-Isidore letters were carried by seven different people, because it is entirely possible that one messenger could carry multiple letters or work over an extended period. Nonetheless, this did give me a better visual sense of where the letter carriers who had been ignored by Braulio-Isidore came into the picture.

It also got me thinking about other intermediaries between bishops. Beyond letters, church councils offer another window into the question of intermediaries in sixth- and seventh-century Iberia. Over thirty councils were held in this period. They were central to ecclesiastical governance, yet attendance was patchy. Bishops often failed to appear, with illness, distance, or political instability likely factors in no-shows. In such cases, bishops could send deputies—presbyters, archpresbyters, abbots, archdeacons, or deacons – to act in their place. These deputies, though lower in rank, played a vital role in connecting bishoprics across the kingdom, like the letter carriers who connected Braulio and Isidore.

Over 10% of those who signed up (“subscribed”) to the records of church councils in the Visigothic period in Iberia were made by such deputies. The mobility of these intermediaries was essential to the cohesion of the Church. They travelled between dioceses, carried information, and facilitated decision-making. Their presence, though often obscured in the sources, helped to make the Church function as a network rather than a collection of isolated nodes.

Take Braulio again. He attended several councils: the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth councils of Toledo, which were held in 633, 636 and 638 respectively. These councils were moments at which the bishops could connect and their subscription lists are a snapshot of who attended.

The following network diagram is derived from the subscription list of the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633, a major “national council”, which was held in 633 and presided over by Bralio’s correspondent, Isidore. Braulio is at the centre, with his connections to the bishops who attended the council represented by the different lines.

But several bishops sent deputies rather than attending. For example, the presbyter Centaurus represented bishop Fidentius of Tucci, subscribing sixty-third on the list.

Looking closely at the edge of the diagram, it is possible to see that Braulio’s connections to those bishops who did not attend IV Toledo were mediated by a range of subordinate clergy, in addition to Centaurus:

• Renatus the archpresbyter subscribed for Ermulfus, bishop of Conimbriga;

• Marcus the presbyter subscribed for David of Auria;

• John the presbyter subscribed for Severus of Barcelona;

• Domarius the archdeacon subscribed for Carterius of Arcauica;

• Stephanus the archdeacon subscribed for Genesius of Magalona;

• Domnellus the archdeacon subscribed for Sollemus of Carcassone.

Of course, the subscription lists are simply a snapshot and cannot tell us anything about the quality of the connection between the people who attended the council – it simply indicates that they were in the same place at the same time. Similarly, it is entirely possible that there were other points of connection between Braulio and the other bishops (including those who did not attend the council). Like the letters mentioned earlier.

As I researched this topic further while at the BCDSS, I moved beyond Braulio and began to explore connectivity on a system-wide basis, looking at subscriptions throughout the period and modelling connectivity, including the integrative role of intermediaries, on a system-wide basis. There is insufficient space in this short blog post to say much more, but the following network visualisation moves us beyond a snapshot of an individual council to zoom in on the connections between the general Third Council of Toledo, held in 589, and some of the smaller councils that followed it.

When viewed from a network perspective, bishops’ deputies played a pivotal role in tying together the disparate bishoprics of Iberia, a topic that I will come back to in future.

Thinking with networks and generating the visualisations has helped me to see the individuals who carried letters between Braulio and Isidore and those who represented their bishops at councils not as peripheral but as central. Ultimately, by focusing on intermediaries we gain a richer, more textured understanding of how Iberian churchmen were connected to one another. These individuals were not mere functionaries; they were agents of connection, transmission, and transformation, and were pivotal to bringing the Church into being in Visigothic Iberia.

Note: my research was funded by the Leverhulme Trust as part of an International Fellowship. Further details of my project, The Unnamed, can be found here: https://makingdigitalhistory.co.uk/network/the-unnamed-slavery-and-the-making-of-the-church-in-late-antique-iberia/.

Network diagrams were generated using Gephi, an open-source network analysis and visualization software package (https://gephi.org/).

Photo by Daniela Berrío Domínguez

One way to try out new ideas is through the 'Wissenschaftsrallye', an annual event at the University of Bonn for teens aged 13 to 19. The rally gives curious youngsters a chance to explore research from across the university’s faculties and to connect with the university as potential future students. Over the past five years, the BCDSS has created a number of activities that bring the realities of strong asymmetrical dependency to life: from a digital quiz on the lives of enslaved people in Ancient Rome to practical challenges like carrying sacks of potatoes, offering participants a feel for the hardships faced by children forced to work in nineteenth-century fields and factories.

This year’s activity was developed in close collaboration with PhD researcher Bahar Bayraktaroğlu on the topic of “Kids in Entertainment”. The idea took shape over several weeks of dynamic collaborative planning, beginning with Bahar’s presentation of her research on “Children and Youth in The Late Ottoman Constantinople: 1880s and Onward”.

Alongside Bahar, the planning team included Niniane Waldmann and Daniela Berrío Domínguez (PR Assistants), Laura Hartmann (Press and PR Coordinator), and Cécile Jeblawei (Press and PR Manager). Guided by the three Cs of public engagement—Collaboration, Communication, and Commitment—we set out to:

1. Distill the complex research topic into a clear, tangible theme

2. Connect this theme to the everyday experiences of 13- to 19-year-olds

3. Design interactive activities that are both educational and enjoyable

4. Ensure we capture personal views and opinions from participants

We focused on the historic case of the London-based “Beni Zoug Zoug Circus”, a renowned troupe that toured circuses, theaters, and entertainment venues across Europe with daring acrobatic acts that thrilled audiences. Behind the spectacle, however, the performers—children as young as three and up to sixteen—were indentured laborers under the authority of a French-Algerian headmaster. In late nineteenth-century East London, it was common for poor families to send their children into such troupes in the hope they would learn a trade and secure employment. Instead, the reality was gruelling: intensive training, strict discipline, and relentless practice often led to exhaustion and frequent injuries. Despite the contracts, the families often received no wages at all. Yet, juvenile acrobats became central to the entertainment world of the time, leaving a lasting imprint on the history of circus and performance arts.

On the day of the rally, our visitors were led through five stations on “Kids in Entertainment”:

1. Historical input: children in entertainment in 19^th century

2. Comparative input: Children in entertainment then and now

3. Reactions: interactive emoji board to express feelings

4. Reflections: rationalizing one’s reactions by given written feedback

5. Fun/Reflections: dressing up and mimicking acrobats on stage

Photos by Daniela Berrío Domínguez

These were some of the youngsters’ reactions:

Image by Niniane Marie Waldmann

Read below some of our team’s impressions:

Bahar Bayraktaroğlu (PhD researcher whose work inspired this activity)
“Taking part in organizing the Wissenschaftsrallye 2025 at the University of Bonn with the PR team of the BCDSS was a memorable experience for me! Closely connected to my doctoral research on children in entertainment, but much more, over several weeks, we met regularly, shared ideas, and worked together to create a program that gradually took shape. Although the event itself was designed for children and young individuals, it attracted the attention of adults, too. Visitors to our mini exhibition showed genuine interest, asked thoughtful questions, and gave us encouraging feedback. Although the preparation was sometimes demanding, it was rewarding to see that our work reached the audience and helped raise awareness of the topic!

In reflecting on this, I was also reminded that child labor has long been tied to the entertainment world—historically visible in theaters, circuses, and street performances, and still present today in different forms across societies. Whether in traditional settings or modern media industries, children continue to contribute to consumption of leisure and pleasure in ways that range along a spectrum, often serving the enjoyment of adults or even other children.”

Niniane Waldmann (PR student assistant)

“Coming into this project, I had little prior knowledge about children in entertainment 150 years ago, so it was both fascinating and shocking to learn about these stories.

I really liked the comparative approach we came up with: children in entertainment then versus children in entertainment now. With my background in media studies, I was drawn to exploring how social media has created new forms of entertainment. I focused on researching family influencers, a lucrative and popular trend, as well as more traditional examples like child dancers. What I found interesting is how these influencers portrayed themselves, whether it was “unscripted” or performative. This also made me reflect on autonomy: while children in the past often had very little say in their roles, today’s “childfluencers” also face the challenge of privacy and genuine autonomy.

This experience also showed me how important it is to integrate children into media literacy education. The lines between performance and authenticity and privacy, or between genuine fun and commodification of life seems blurry. At the same time, drawing on their response sheets, the children seemed mostly critical and thoughtful of children entertainers. While this seems reassuring, I believe there is an ongoing need for media education.”

Daniela Berrío Domínguez (PR student assistant)

“Back in my home country Colombia, the normalization of children in entertainment and child labor is part of daily life. In a society where inequality and extreme poverty are the common denominator, it is not unusual to see kids juggling or performing acrobatics at traffic lights. For many, the immediate thought is simply that these children and their families will have at least something to eat.

Participating in the Wissenschaftralley 2025 made me realize what a privilege it is, as a child, to have access to education, play, and care, without having to give that up just to entertain others or to survive. I’m grateful to the BCDSS for creating spaces where younger generations can reflect on realities sometimes far from their own, yet still generate meaningful conversations with friends and family.”

Azemina Coric (PR student assistant)

“What I found interesting about the project is that it examined children in entertainment through the lens of dependency. The aim was to encourage young participants to think critically about these relationships, both historically and in the present day, using examples such as children working as entertainers on digital platforms.

Personally, I think the project's greatest strength was its ability to create an interactive experience that was both enjoyable and meaningful for the children involved. It conveyed the important message that dependency can manifest in various forms, even within seemingly appealing contexts such as historical circuses or contemporary online entertainment spaces.”

Find more information on our rallies here.

Ana Carolina Schveitzer, in her research, titled “Making Germany’s Hidden Yet Omnipresent Colonial Past Visible,” specifically talks about how the museum landscape hinders historical reparations in Berlin—for instance, she talks about the non-European collection of the Pergamon Museum or the Neues Museum and how it lacks an official reflection on how such objects ended up in Berlin and the ethical measures that the museums adopted to display objects of cultural and spiritual significance (Schveitzer 2024, pp.161–76). This erasure is carried out through various institutions and in different forms of knowledge production.

This blog discusses a very specific form of knowledge production—the knowledge that is produced by an ethnological collection—in Europe and beyond, through the Anthropological Collection in the Indian Museum, Kolkata, to the Humboldt Forum and Rautenstrauch Joest Museum in Germany, and explores the idea of visitors’ affect through such spaces shrouded with colonial violence through personal experiences and academic interests.

Ethnological museums in the last few decades have been considerably debated as being reproducers of neo-colonial power relations as well as knowledge orders by adhering to popular representational practices. Ethnological collections are shaped by histories of violent displacement through wars, plunder, and looting. Under such circumstances, it becomes ever important for the ethnological museums to bring their practices under immense reflection and scrutiny (Grigo and Laely 2022, pp. 119–51).

My exposure to colonial entanglements within museum spaces started with occasional visits to the Indian Museum in my hometown, Kolkata, India. Initially referred to as the ‘Imperial Museum of Calcutta,’ it was constructed in 1814 by the Asiatic Society of Bengal, while India was under British rule. It is the oldest museum in the country and the largest in Asia (GuhaThakurta 2004 pp. 236-242). Locally referred to as the “Jadu-ghar,” or the house of curiosities, the imperial museum in the colony catered to colonial epistemologies of classification and ordering—the ‘Egyptian Gallery’ attracts the most visitors as everyone marvels at the Egyptian Mummy exhibited along with a mummified hand, which was claimed to be a ‘gift’ to the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1844. Given the colonial context of 19th-century India under British rule and the fact that Calcutta (Kolkata) was the capital of British India, the question of how and why these objects were displayed invites answers that arguably corroborate colonial plunder and violent displacements of cultural objects. It almost felt sinful to ‘marvel’ at such objects, which were eroded off their context of origin, worship, and memory.

Figure 1: The Egyptian Gallery at the Indian Museum, Kolkata, India. Picture by Indian Museum, Kolkata https://indianmuseumkolkata.org/gallery/egypt-gallery/ .

With my theoretically aided ideas on how colonial power is echoed through museum spaces, I had the chance to visit the Humboldt Forum, an ethnological museum at the heart of Berlin, as part of an excursion organised by the BCDSS in the 2-year MA program. The Humboldt Forum represented a very different trajectory of colonial encounters (Steckenbiller 2019 pp. 99-116). The silencing of cultural and spiritual subjectivities within the space was discursive, which only highlighted the effort of building a master narrative that disrupts the history of the objects. For example, “A Processional Bull Nandi” under display in the Humboldt Forum is an artwork of spiritual and historicalsignificance. However, the museum’s statement that “This processional figure came in 1987 as a present from a Swiss collector to the, at that time, Museum for Indian Art, and is today a special eye-catcher in the Humboldt Forum” (Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss, n.d.) obscures the journey of the object from its origin to the market for ‘sale’, displacing it not only from its historical but also the spiritual and religious context to which it belonged; I was constantly bombarded with the ethical question of how I am supposed to feel amidst the objects and their narrative that is constructed throughout the space.

Figure 2: Cultural Artefacts on Display at the Humboldt Forum. Picture by Klaudia İnanç.

Since my visit to the Humboldt Forum, the need for a decolonial thought and practice was no longer up for debate, but a necessity. My thoughts and ideas on the coloniality of ethnological museums were further refined and contested through my internship days at the Rautenstrauch Joest Museum (RJM) in Cologne, which simultaneously nudged me to learn, unlearn, and relearn the episteme of the de-colonial. The Rautenstrauch Joest Museum comes with the by-line, “cultures of the world,” which confirms the colonial agenda of representation of the ‘self’ through the ‘other.’ The RJM’s historical background reveals that it was founded in 1901 as the ‘Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum of Ethnology’ in Cologne’s Südstadt district and was born out of some 65,000 objects from Oceania, Africa, Asia, and America, along with 100,000 photographs, and a collection of 40,000 books (Rautenstrauch‑Joest‑Museum Köln, n.d.). My first impression of the museum was significantly shaped by the permanent exhibition, which displays objects from various temporalities and spatialities, often brought together in a place where they are stripped off their context. Although many objects are displayed alongside a curatorial text, their agencies are usually consumed through the massive monochromatic walls that construct the space.

A striking contrast, however, is posed at the ‘I Miss You’ exhibition, which forms the metaphorical and literal central stage of the museum. The exhibition started with a video footage of an interview with Dr. Peju Layiwola, an art historian and visual artist from Nigeria, who is also the granddaughter of Oba Akenzua II, the Oba of Benin who ruled from 1933 to 1978, and also happens to be the co-curator of this particular exhibit (Layiwola, n.d.). Displaying her interview allowed the accommodation of cultural memory of the Benin Bronzes while extensively discussing the colonial premise of eventual displacement through raids and loot by British soldiers in 1897. This narrative of colonial acquisition being talked about gives a strong political backbone to the exhibition. This attempt to facilitate an empathetic understanding of history through the lens of belongingness and cultural memory, ownership, and mutual respect, while fostering a scope for dialogue, came across as the first trace of decolonial thinking against the ethnological infrastructure (Layiwola 2021).

An addition to similar curatorial practice was seen in the temporary exhibit, ‘The Invisible City,’ an artistic intervention into the permanent exhibition of the RJM. Centred around the history of German colonialism in Qingdao, co-curated by Jimmi Wing Ka Ho, the primary objects of display were over 200 photographs from the archive of RJM. These were originally published in Kolonie und Heimat, the official publication of the Women’s League of the German Colonial Society, published between 1907 and 1919, which was taken to celebrate the triumph of urban planning and spatial segregation and became the embodiment of German colonialism in Qingdao. This exhibit critically reflects on the idea of colonial photography as the founding premise of these photographs in the RJM.

The dialogue started by Dr. Lawiyola, continued through ‘The Invisible City,’ from Benin to Qingdao, the RJM showed clear and promising traces of transformation as both the exhibits channelised the intent of the museum to critically engage with counter-hegemonic knowledge practices. These two installations function as visions of a future of ethnological museums, curated with empathy and historical sensitivity, which acknowledge not only the need for restitution of cultural belongings but, parallelly, the restitution of cultural knowledge that makes up the objects.

The main project that I worked on, along with a group of Fellows, was to curate a weekend aimed at initiating a long-term initiative to confront and critically approach colonial legacies in the RJM. The ‘Yellow Room,’ situated in an intersection between the ‘I Miss You’ and the ‘The Invisible City,’ had the spatial advantage of being architecturally central to the museum and hence the ideal position for a Third Space. It was envisioned to continue the dialogue on the restitution of erased histories of subjugation and oppression, handled with responsible knowledge mediation. Although coming from diverse backgrounds, the team of Fellows, along with Vera Marušić from the RJM, collectively opined that although exhibitions had individually addressed the question of the colonial, no collective effort had been made to critically engage with the space or the collection it houses. We aimed to envision a space amidst the ethnological landscape that would go beyond objects while altering the form of museum engagement that usually exists in ethnological museums through the inception of the weekend program, which we collectively titled “Tracing the ‘Anti-Colonial.” It was our primary goal for this weekend to design a practice-based method that tends to explore and enquire ways in which the visitors can exercise more creative agency within the museum by actively co-creating knowledge, thereby contesting the authoritative knowledge-making tendency of ethnological museums. We achieved this by using music and putting together an anti-colonial playlist titled “Scoring The Resistance,” making zines, or engaging with an ‘anti-colonial’ library—a collection of books that feature narratives of colonial power structures and dependencies.

Figure 3: The Third Space at the RJM, the Yellow Room. Picture taken by the author.

Figure 4: Collection from the ‘Anti-colonial’ Library. Picture taken by the author.

Figure 5: A fragment of the ‘Anti-Colonial’ library. Picture taken by the author.

Our vision was to encourage critical reflection and the emergence and continuation of new academic paradigms. MA students from the BCDSS who attended the program and have spent some time within the space have critically reflected on and engaged with it through their positionalities and research interests. As Sonia Tesfaye states, “It was a joy to encounter familiar works and books connected to topics we had explored in past seminars at the BCDSS. The cozy and colourful arrangement of the space made it feel warm and inviting, almost like stepping into a creative home. Overall, the exhibition was not only visually and intellectually engaging but also participatory, emotional, and profoundly memorable” (Sonia Tesfaye Abebe). However, the space similarly aroused very contrasting perceptions: “What is curated here is courage, not closure. I remember practicing neutrality while interning in RJM, but it never fit. Here, in the Third Space, surrounded by looted objects, I felt anger braided with care. It is a room for conversation, yes, but it is also a waiting room for restitution” (Adiam Tadele Abadi).

Figure 6: MA Students from the BCDSS during the Zine Workshop. Picture taken by Tobi Bolaji Idowu.

Hooper Greenhill talks about the “transmission approach” within museum spaces where the visitors are “cognitively passive” and how such practices constitute a linear model of knowledge production which caters to Western hegemonic knowledge production (Hooper Greenhill 2000 pp. 9-31). Klaudis İnanç states along similar lines, “Museums are often replete with an unknown, difficult-to-decipher past. Sometimes the museum space remains empty, ready to be filled with people’s experiences and new perspectives on important topics. This is exactly what happened during the zine-making session. It created an additional layer in the museum that allowed us, the participants, to respond creatively to the colonial heritage” (Klaudia İnanç).

To conclude on a personal note, this internship helped me explore possible avenues of decolonial practice within ethnological museums through research work and curatorial practices, while attending to the issue of empathetic curation to cater to the visitor’s affect. It simultaneously presents the premise to conduct further research through the lens of strong asymmetrical dependency, in terms of the triad of power and agency—the space, object, and the visitor—while the Third Space at the RJM thrives to represent voices from around the globe to acknowledge silenced yet violent colonial histories.

Figure 7: The RJM Fellows (from left to right) Tobi Bolaji Idowu, Nayra Ramos, Prateeti Mukhopadhyay, and Vera Marušić, explaining the ‘Anti-Colonial’ project to the visitors. Picture taken by Nanette Snoep.

As a legal historian, I am also used to working with written documents: doctrinal books, decrees, petitions, reports, codes, court transcripts. These are the materials that traditionally define the boundaries of the field. They are what legal history has largely built itself upon. But sitting in a small room at the Center for African Studies in Maputo, headphones on, I found myself listening to a different kind of legal past: spoken, translated and recorded on magnetic tape more than forty years ago.

Listening to the first cassette tapes at the Centro de Estudos Africanos from Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo. The headphones aren’t visible here, but they were there, and it took a while before they worked properly. All photos in this post were taken by me, with permission from the archive staff.

This post emerges from ongoing reflections within the Mutual Dependencies and Normative Production in Africa research group, where we explore what it means to approach law, normativity, and dependency through orality. More broadly, it challenges the disciplinary boundaries of legal history, especially in postcolonial contexts where written legal records are often incomplete, fragmented, or shaped by colonial frameworks. As I will argue, turning to oral history archives does more than uncover new historical details. It pushes us to reconsider the methods and assumptions behind how we collect, interpret, and validate historical evidence, particularly at the intersection of legal history and dependency studies.

This reconsideration is especially urgent in Africa, where the field of legal history is still developing. Traditionally, it has been dominated by written sources: official documents produced under colonial regimes, or through interactions with colonial authorities. While jurists are beginning to engage with the field, oral materials often remain on the margins, seen as supplementary rather than central. Many social historians have incorporated oral interviews and collective memory to enrich their work on legal issues (see for example Allina 2012; Sarr 2016 and Thomaz 2022), yet efforts to access African voices in the production of law still tend to focus primarily on written case files or court records.

In Mozambique, this challenge is especially acute. Colonized by Portugal in the late 15th century and brought under formal colonial administration in the late 19th century, the country gained independence only in 1975 after a decade-long liberation struggle. Portuguese colonial rule was bureaucratically dense, yet it left scattered records about everyday legal life, particularly in rural areas. And while some colonial anthropological accounts attempt to reconstruct “customary” systems, they often do so through the lens of indirect rule or development planning. As a result, we are left with a highly biased and fragmented picture of how law was actually produced.

This fragmentation is also reflected in the archive itself. Although there are collections of court cases and other legal documents that offer insights into African perceptions of law and justice, these materials are often unevenly preserved and difficult to access. Certain regions and periods (especially the pre-colonial and early colonial years) are notably underrepresented. The limited resources available for preservation and cataloguing further complicate efforts to navigate these collections.

But what happens when the legal past is remembered not through litigation, but through storytelling?

This is where the oral history archives come in. Beginning in the late 1970s, a series of oral history initiatives were launched by state institutions in newly independent Mozambique: the Centro de Estudos Africanos (CEA), the Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique (AHM), and the Direção Nacional de Cultura (DNC). Although each project was coordinated independently and pursued distinct goals—some focused on documenting the liberation struggle or reconstructing precolonial political formations, while the DNC sought to encourage Mozambicans to “be interested in and become aware of the value and importance of their own culture” by recording songs, dances, rituals, and other cultural practices—they were united by a broader political vision. All were shaped by the state-building ambitions of the time, rooted in socialist ideals and committed to recovering national cultures, voices, and knowledge systems that had been marginalized under colonial rule (Fernandes, 2023).

A sample of the 350 cassette tapes found in 2016 by Carlos Fernandes, researcher at the Centro de Estudos Africanos (CEA). Carlos studies the history of the CEA itself and is currently leading a project to catalogue, preserve, and promote this archival collection.

From 1979 onward, these institutions sent teams to various parts of the country (especially the northern provinces of Cabo Delgado and Niassa, where the liberation struggle had its beginning and was more present) to record testimonies about the war for independence, social life, rituals, customary practices, and local histories. The result was a vast collection of audio material: hundreds of cassette tapes containing interviews, storytelling sessions, and reports based on recorded conversations with people who experienced colonial rule firsthand.

Cassette tapes from the oral sources section at the Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique.

These materials were not designed as legal sources. Yet they contain a wealth of information about normative practices: how marriages were negotiated, how land was allocated, how disputes were resolved, how labor was organized, how power was exercised. In other words, they document the social terrain on which law, both colonial and non-colonial, was produced, resisted, and adapted.

Transcript of an interview about rain-calling rituals, which were essential for managing land, economic, and succession matters. The document is held at the archive of the Institute for Social and Cultural Research (ARPAC), which preserves the records (mainly transcripts) of the interviews conducted as part of the DNC's oral history project.

Listening to these recordings, what emerges is not only an alternative legal archive, but also a set of reflections on how people remember and narrate dependency.

Some interviews describe relations of forced labor, tax collection, and movement restrictions under Portuguese rule. Others go further back, recounting precolonial forms of subjugation: individuals given as tribute to chiefs, families marked by hereditary servitude, groups without access to land or political voice. In many cases, the categories used are not legal in a formal sense, meaning they do not correspond to western European definitions, but they clearly describe socially recognized forms of hierarchy, obligation, and unfreedom.

These fragments are especially significant in light of the conceptual framework we use at the BCDSS. If we understand dependency not only as a legal status (such as slavery or indenture) but also as a social relation (one that can be coercive, asymmetrical, and enduring) then these oral archives become vital. They reveal how dependency was structured, named, and negotiated across time periods and normative systems.

For example, in interviews collected by the team of the Historical Archive of Mozambique as part of a project on precolonial political formations, elders speak of local forms of authority and the obligations they entailed. These include tribute relationships, patron-client dynamics, and restrictions on mobility. Although these are retrospective accounts, often based on transmitted stories rather than personal experience, they reflect a shared memory of legal and social differentiation.

Such material also raises important methodological questions. Can we consider these interviews legal sources? What kind of legal history can be written from narratives shaped by oral transmission, political ideology, and memory work? And how do we, as scholars, avoid either romanticizing these accounts or dismissing them as anecdotal?

Legal history, as a field, has been slow to embrace oral histories and audio sources. In part, this is due to broader methodological concerns about reliability, verifiability, and the privileging of canonical texts. But it also reflects a deeper epistemological bias: the idea that law is best studied through writing. Even when oral history is used, particularly within civil law traditions and continental European historiographies, it tends to be limited to interviews with prominent legal figures like judges, lawyers, and prosecutors, or to recordings of courtroom proceedings and legislative sessions (Portelli, 1985). This reinforces a narrow understanding of what counts as legal memory and whose voices matter in the reconstruction of legal pasts. The assumption that legal history should be grounded primarily in written records is particularly strong in colonial and imperial contexts, where archives are often the only “official” sources of information.

Yet in postcolonial contexts like Mozambique, where multiple normative orders and oral transmission were central to how people understood and navigated law, such a narrow source base limits what legal history can say. It risks reproducing the same silences and asymmetries that structured the colonial archive in the first place.

The oral history projects initiated in the late 1970s offer a different kind of archive. They are not without problems, since interviews were shaped by state agendas, conducted under the influence of dominant political narratives, and often lack contextual documentation. But they offer access to legal consciousness, to the way law was remembered, discussed, and reinterpreted outside courtrooms or colonial offices.

Moreover, the fact that these interviews were recorded and not just transcribed adds another layer. Listening to the tapes, one hears pauses, emphases, repetitions. One hears interviewers guiding answers, or informants hesitating. These features do not make the material more “authentic,” but they remind us that legal history can be constructed not only through content, but also through form.

My time in Maputo confirmed something I had long suspected: that writing legal histories of Mozambique requires moving beyond the written colonial archive. It requires attention to sound, to voice, to memory. It requires taking seriously the oral as both method and source, not just as a supplement to documents, but as a legitimate entry point into legal-historical research. And this does not mean abandoning rigor or critical distance. It means expanding our methodological toolbox to include the kinds of materials that reflect how people actually experienced law: in conversation, in dispute, in negotiation, in recollection.

The Mozambican oral history archives, I believe, offer one path forward. They allow us to listen—to dependency, to law, to the silences and structures that formal archives often obscure. And they invite us to reconsider what counts as a legal source, and what stories legal historians are able (and willing) to tell.

In this framework, the first cooperation meeting was held in Istanbul in 2023 with the participation of Dr. Basak Tug Onaran, then Head of the History Department at Istanbul Bilgi University, and Prof. Dr. Stephan Conermann. As part of the partnership between the two universities, the first History Graduate Conference was held on May 17-18, 2024, at Istanbul Bilgi University Santralistanbul Campus. The conference was organized by graduate students from the History Department of Istanbul Bilgi University, in collaboration with the Ottoman Slavery Working Group and BCDSS. The conference was also organized with the support of the Tarih Vakfı, one of Turkey’s foremost historical research institutions.

The second History Graduate Conference was held on May 9–10, 2025. In advance of the conference, a meeting was convened to strengthen collaboration between the two universities. Participants included Prof. Conerman and Dr. Veruschka Wagner, an investigator at the BCDSS, as well as representatives from Istanbul Bilgi University: Prof. Dr. Hasret Dikici Bilgin, Dean of the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences; Dr. Murat Dağlı, Head of the Department of History; and Prof. Dr. Bülent Bilmez, Coordinator of the MA Program. These meetings are of crucial value in shaping and deepening cooperation between institutions. The purpose of the conference organized in this context is to bring together graduate students working in the field of history and academics from different disciplines, creating a multidisciplinary atmosphere where they can share their research. The collaboration with Bilgi University stems not only from BCDSS’s goal of creating a global network but also from Bilgi University’s strong academic background, particularly in the social sciences and humanities. This partnership embodies the aim of both institutions to develop original and critical perspectives in comparative history and dependency studies.

Prof. Conerman’s welcome speech (Photo by Halide Kahraman)

Dr. Murat Dagli’s welcome speech (Photo by Halide Kahraman)

The conference was attended by Prof. Conerman, Dr. Veruschka Wagner, and Phd Candidate Zeynep Yesim Gökce from BCDSS and eight master’s students. With Dr. Veruschka Wagner serving as the bridge between the two institutions, we, Zeynep and Halide, acted as the main contact points for the organizing team—coordinating efforts, facilitating communication, and helping everything come together. It was an enriching experience to be part of a collaborative process that brought together passionate researchers in such a dynamic, interdisciplinary environment. The conference started with a welcome speech by Prof. Conermann and Dr. Dağlı. Prof. Conerman underscored the significance of collaboration between the two universities and noted that the conference’s organization by master’s students was crucial in developing their academic responsibility and organizational skills. The conference continued with a keynote speech by Prof. Dr. Oktay Özel. Prof. Özel invited the audience to a comprehensive intellectual journey on the transformation process of historiography in Turkey. He discussed the development of the discipline of history from its early introverted nature to the multifaceted relations it has established with the social sciences and humanities over time. Within this framework, he also addressed fundamental debates on methodology and questions about the ways in which we produce historical knowledge. This broad perspective has enabled young researchers in particular to situate their research in broader academic contexts.

(Photo by Halide Kahraman)

The two-day conference comprised eight panels and 30 papers. On the first day, during the second panel titled “Narrating the Modern: Voices from Different Geographies”, BCDSS pre-doctoral fellow Nataliia Voitko delivered her presentation titled “Framing and Experiencing ‘Education Through Work’ in the Late Soviet Union”. Voitko argued how child labour was ideologically legitimised in the late Soviet and how children experienced this system in different ways. In the same panel, Ankit Chowdhury, in his presentation on “Where the Street Speaks: Narratives of Struggle and Solidarity at the Durgapur Steel Plant in India” examined working class resistance and identity formation in Durgapur and discussed how the interaction between cultural networks and economic structures has determined the course of labour movements in India.

On the second day, during the sixth panel titled “Gendered Chains: Women’s Experiences of Slavery,” Halide Kahraman, delivered a presentation on “A Comparative Analysis of Women’s Manumission Practices in the Ottoman Empire and Early Antebellum South America” which focused on the manumission experiences of enslaved women by comparing two case studies from different societies. Klaudia İnanç, in her presentation titled “Echoes of Resistance: Uncovering the Agency of Enslaved Women Through Material Culture” emphasised how the experiences of enslaved women are made visible through material culture and how material artefacts can be read as forms of resistance despite efforts to silence them. Zeinab Akbari, in her paper titled “Taj al-Saltaneh and the Paradox of Privilege”, examined the complex interplay between status and constraint in the life of the Qajar princess. In the last paper of the panel, Narges Mirzapour in her presentation entitled “The Practices of True Womanhood/Motherhood in Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Toni Morrison’s Beloved: Breaking the Silence” which explored how enslaved women’s experiences of motherhood were shaped by and challenged dominant ideals of womanhood.

(Photo by Prateeti Mukhopadhyay)

In the seventh panel, “Politics of Historical Conflicts” Prateeti Mukhopadhyay, in her presentation titled, “ ‘Silenced’ but not ‘Silent’: Enquiring Politics of Representation of Gendered Experiences in the Partition Museum through the Eyes of the Survivors” examined the Museum of Partition in Amritsar, India. She considered the politics of representing gendered experiences of partition and questioned how museums include trauma into public memory, along with the ethical and political implications of these representations.

(Photo by Zeynep Yeşim Gökçe)

In the eighth and last panel, “Construction and Deconstruction Through Memory and Education,” Daniil Orlov delivered a paper, “«Time of Troubles» in the Putin’s Historical Policy,” where he discussed how historical memory is instrumentalised in contemporary Russian politics and shared his analysis of how historical narratives are constructed and contested in modern Russia, analysing state-controlled media, school textbooks, monuments and political speeches.

(Photo by Zeinab Akbari)

The conference marked an important milestone in the growing collaboration between the two universities. Researchers from various institutions came together to share their work, and the lively question-and-answer sessions after each presentation provided valuable opportunities for participants to reflect on and strengthen their research.

This atmosphere also made visible how BCDSS master’s students have developed their perspectives and made their original contributions to the study of dependency and slavery. The participants brought an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective, shaped by the BCDSS, to the conference discussions, drawing on historical examples and theoretical approaches from diverse geographies. In this way, the various research projects aimed at understanding the concept of dependency came together in a meaningful and coherent whole.

For the students attending, the visit to Istanbul was not only academically enriching but also a meaningful cultural experience. As part of the organizing team, we also gained a great deal from the conference meeting, including being inspired by others, exchanging ideas, and experiencing the excitement of interdisciplinary dialogue. We hope this enriching tradition will continue in the years to come, further strengthening the connections between institutions and students.

Team BCDSS

(Photo by Lütfiye Çetin)

If we look at disciplines in the biological sciences such as zoology, and within it, ethology, it becomes evident how animals are at the center of the creation of scientific knowledge. In the health sciences, experiments with laboratory animals to develop, for example, a vaccine like the COVID-19 vaccine, which acts against other microscopic organisms to save human lives, also demonstrate how multispecies relationships have always been a precondition for scientific production. The use of horses in the production of anti-venom serum and llamas in the production of antibodies that neutralize HIV strains are just two examples among many that accumulate. They show that the relationship between science and animals has been to instrumentalize them for human well-being. There are disputes within the life sciences concerning animal ethics, but due to limited space, I will not delve into that here.

Let’s now look in another direction in the scientific universe. We come across with social and human sciences that aim to decentralize the human and break with their own foundational basis: anthropocentrism. Concerned with the agency of everything – spirits, objects, fungi, animals, and so on – social scientists and environmental humanities researchers strive to prove that animals have agency, often without success in convincing sociologists, who still resist the idea that agency extends beyond humans. Another obsession, this one stemming from classical Philosophy, is rationality (after all, cogito ergo sum). Based on the idea of natural hierarchies among living beings, we postulate that humans are indeed animals among other animals, but are, however, rational animals, which differentiates them from the others. Therefore, social scientists and humanities scholars who are “riding the wave” of multispecies studies, animal studies, Anthropocene, etc., find themselves confronted with the challenge of demonstrating that animals not only have agency but are also endowed with reason and even participate in political life.

If, on the one hand, we have a utilitarian view of life beyond the human, and on the other, we have the philosophical premise of overcoming anthropocentrism, the dystopian reality in which we live crosses us faster than electrons in a particle accelerator. News stories on the same topic shocked the community (civil and scientific) on April 7th of this year: the return of dire wolves (Marks 2025; Kluger 2025). Extinct for at least 10,000 years, dire wolves were canids over one meter tall (slightly larger than current gray wolves) that roamed the American continent. Earlier this year, the company Colossal Biosciences announced the birth of dire wolves Romulus and Remus, products of the most modern genetic engineering that science is capable of offering. The main reason? According to the company, advances in genetic engineering can help endangered species by gene-editing them and bring back other extinct species. In other words: let’s not worry about mass extinction, it’s reversible. Of course, shrewdly, the cofounder of Colossal, Ben Lamm, makes the opposite point: according to him, this experiment merely proves that genetic engineering should be the last resort, because a species will not return to what it was before. He refers here to the crossing of dire wolf genes with gray wolf genes, a necessary action to bring the extinct animals back. So, he argues that, for a zoologist, Romulus and Remus are not dire wolves.

Mythological Romulus and Remus being nurtered by a she-wolf. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

And it is in these peculiarities that the central issue of the problem is lost: while we discuss animal agency or the utilitarian use of animals in laboratories, private capital companies are developing false solutions to a true crisis with announced catastrophic consequences: mass extinction. At best, what the tests that led to the birth of these poor dire wolves offer is an excuse to continue with suicidal and genocidal practices, businesses, and policies. That is, they are reactionary to the point of being committed to maintaining the status quo. The story gets even more insane when you look at Colossal’s founding objective: the return of mammoths. Reality surpasses fiction and this dystopian universe we live in is in contradiction with several other universes in which we do not live directly, but in which we are partially involved. For example, regarding the return of dire wolves, Lamm states that:

“Our long-term goal is to put them back into expansive ecological preserves, but to do that in a way that’s far away from humans, far away from cattle, far away from everything that there would be conflict around, and probably on indigenous land because of the spiritual connection to them.”

The reader must be asking “Pardon me, did I understand correctly?” Yes, the statement is obscene on several layers. Firstly, the company does not know what to do with these wolves and has nowhere to put them, only speculating about what this place should be like. Secondly, they are concerned about possible conflicts purely of an economic nature, already stating that the predators will be far from cattle. As we know, cattle in our capitalist society are not sentient beings; they are livestock. Thirdly, it would seem naive, if not clearly cynical, to state that it is possible to bring an extinct animal back to life in a way that does not create socio-ecological conflicts, wherever this animal may be. Fourth and the most problematic point of all: the wolves must be placed far from humans, but in Indigenous reserves. The implication of this phrase is clear, direct, and blatant: Indigenous peoples are less than human. It’s almost as if they were saying “let’s put together two categories of non-humans who no longer belong in today’s world.” Fifth and last, what spiritual connection does a contemporary Indigenous person have with an animal extinct more than 10,000 years ago? Here, American indigenous cosmology is being instrumentalized to dump a technocapitalist problem on the backs of those who have nothing to do with it. Furthermore, such cosmology is distorted. This view reveals an essentialist and colonizing version of the connection that indigenous peoples have with animals.

But then, what connection would this be?

This theme will be discussed over two days (June 17th–18th) at the “Entangled Lives: Exploring the (Inter)Dependency Between People and Animals in the Americas” workshop at the University of Bonn. The workshop will bring together researchers from the fields of anthropology, archaeology, and history to discuss relational ontologies of the American continent within the “human-animal” framework, the frictions caused by the shock of colonization in the relationship with and creation of animals, the impact of the enslavement of humans and animals on socio-ecological relations, and how animals challenged the colonization of the continent. Furthermore, this workshop aims to collectively identify directions that future studies on animals in the humanities and social sciences can follow. Beyond demonstrating the processes of exploitation, enslavement, and commodification that animals suffered from American colonization, we propose to think about and develop tools to decolonize research on animal-human entanglements. Therefore, bringing together disciplines such as archaeology, history, and anthropology enables us to visualize how such relationships were established and maintained, how and in what ways they evolved, and how they are perceived in the present by Indigenous communities. This is a necessary step to challenge utilitarian views on animals in the sciences.

Workshop poster. Artwork by Maria Cecilia Bogado.

It seems to me that our role as researchers and members of the academic community is to challenge the epistemic relativism that allows for a reality where mammoths and dire wolves are brought back from extinction only to be extinguished a second time. At this point, overcoming the anthropocentric vanity of reviving such species to push the limits of science requires not the overcoming of anthropocentrism itself, but the annihilation of the very idea of the human. After all, it wasn’t long ago that we wrote “man” as a synonym for human and “mankind” as a synonym for humanity. This is because the idea of the human has always existed in a hierarchy that disguises itself as being based on kind, but is in fact based on degree. That is, the human is not simply the species Homo sapiens sapiens. The human has gender, class, and color. The human is essentially a white, cis, heterosexual, and non-peripheral male. Throughout the historical process, this idea gains additional nuances to serve the prevailing political-economic model, but in its essence, all those of the same species who escape the aforementioned adjectives are human, albeit a little less so. They are human, but dehumanized.

Therefore, directing our attention to human-animal entanglements requires questioning the very idea of the human and pushing the limits of science to forge a convivial reality that is ethical with life, in which solutions are not imagined from a premise of a “natural” hierarchy among living beings. The capacity to imagine must be elaborated in conjunction with other species, and the ultimate goal of the imaginative effort must be transformation and/or revolution.

That day, we, the 1st-semester students of the master’s program "Dependency and Slavery Studies" had the opportunity to experience the processes involved in the making of Roman concrete. In this blog post, you will read about the purpose of experimental archaeology, the material culture theory we used during our practical session and how we recreated opus signinum. Most importantly, this experiment aimed at offering us a chance to reflect on labour and supply processes of the past and to think through a critical lens about situations of dependency within different contexts.

Diving into material culture: experimental archaeology

Reconstructive experimental archaeology (see Schöbel 2019) is interested in physically recreating past material culture and technology. Through carefully designed, monitored, and documented scientific projects, artifacts are brought back to life using materials and equipment from their specific time period. Therefore, the aim is to reproduce as accurately as possible the historical context of an artifact while following a precise methodology. Reconstructive experimental archaeology is particularly useful in providing a new perspective to scientific analysis. Indeed, it can offer unique insights into artifacts, such as how they were manufactured, how they were used, and how efficient they were. Furthermore, reconstructive experimental archaeology can provide a deeper knowledge of the lived experiences of individuals with the artifacts and the sensory experiences they would have had while engaging with them.

Physical reconstructions can be divided into three different levels based on how authentically close they are to the original context and the methodology used. Level I reproductions are deemed to be non-scientific and non-authentic. Therefore, they may not be referred to as “reconstructive archaeology”. In the context of our experiment, we aimed at reproducing a Level II status, which is an authentic but non-scientific project concerned with understanding the steps and considerations involved on a purely experiential level. We were thus interested in the making of Roman concrete as well as the technical knowledge necessary in every step of the process. Given the practice and time investment needed to successfully execute a scientific and authentic reconstruction, it was not feasible for us to achieve the third, experimental level.

Making concrete as done by Martínez et al.

Our model study, conducted by Martínez et al., aimed at recreating opus signinum, a type of water-resistant Roman concrete. The researchers were interested in the amount of water required in the production of opus signinum as well as the logistical challenges involved with acquiring and handling it.

Opus signinum is a mixture of lime putty, sand and chamotte, which are pieces of crushed ceramics that function as an aggregate. In their approach, Martínez et al. drew upon ancient sources from the Roman world as well as other archaeological experiments. They also consulted master builders familiar with traditional techniques and materials in order to mimic the production process as successfully as possible.

Our concrete journey

For our in-class practical session, we followed the quantities established by the example study. We approached the process on an experiential level, with an interest in the techniques used to make, and the experience of making, Roman concrete.

Our lecturer, Dr. James Harland, spent several months preparing the proper building materials, tools, and safety precautions as well as practicing the procedure. Most tools were acquired at a hardware store, and most building materials were available to order online.

On the day of the experiment, students were provided with safety equipment and tasked with crushing pieces of pottery into chamotte of varying sizes. This step was followed by lime-slaking, a highly dangerous process of mixing quicklime with water at a 1:3,5 ratio to form a thick putty.

While mixing, the temperature of the lime increases rapidly, which causes bubbles and fumes to rise from the hot mixture. Our volunteer students conducted this step in full safety gear with suits, goggles, gloves, and masks. The observers were tasked with continuously reminding students not to touch anything that had come in contact with the corrosive mixture. After mixing, the lime putty was left to cool.

Figure 1 (on the left): Pieces of chamotte
Figure 2 (in the middle): Three students slaking the lime in a bucket
Figure 3 (on the right): Slaked lime putty
(All photos in this post are by Buğra N. Duman and Dr. James Harland)

The mortar was then created by combining the lime putty, crushed chamotte, and sand at a 1:1:3 ratio. We added an additional 1 liter of water to the mixture so the consistency of the mortar resembled the description in our ancient Roman source (Vitruvius, De Architectura II 5). The mortar was then left to rest so that any residual water could evaporate.

We applied the opus signinum to a wooden frame prepared earlier. The application process proved to be technically difficult, and those of us with prior experience in construction were able to demonstrate their skill. Since Martínez et al. also consulted professional builders in their experiment, it seems that previous knowledge and experience are crucial to a successful application of opus signinum.

Figure 4 (on the left): Student applying opus signinum onto the frame
Figure 5 (on the right): Final result of the opus signinum after the drying process

Overall, the process took our group an entire afternoon, during which we only produced and applied about 8 liters of opus signinum. We used a total of seven liters of regular tap water.

While the mixture did resemble the description in our sources during the process, we observed a crack on the semi-hardened surface of the frame during our follow-up examination three days later. Dr. Harland suggested it was likely due to a lack of moisture in the mixture, probably caused by the cold weather at the end of November.

Remembering the precise instructions of this exercise was a feat that involved most of our group at any given moment, constantly shouting around times, quantities, and materials to record. Division of labour was crucial here as the students in safety gear and involved in the mixing of the mortar could neither consult the sources and make calculations nor record the process.

Opus signinum and dependency

Researchers at the Morón lime museum, as mentioned by Martínez et al., suggest that lime-slaking was probably performed by female workers. Unlike the volunteers in our reproduction, they did not have access to the appropriate safety gear and would oftentimes go blind. Having experienced the process ourselves, we realised the immense vulnerability of the women on a Roman construction site, but also their integral role in society.

Figure 6: Students and the lecturer posing in safety equipment, ready to proceed with the lime-slaking!

By engaging in a practical exercise, we were able to uncover “hidden labour” involved in the process. It is those tasks, and more importantly, the people engaged in the tasks, that we tend to take for granted and thus forget. The practical session widened the scope of our analysis from the grand buildings and infrastructure of ancient Rome to the (oftentimes dependent) people who created them. By recreating their tasks and conditions, we learned to ask the right questions, namely questions that could help us understand not only the work of dependent labourers but also their roles in society. We got to ask who it was that had to complete the more dangerous tasks and why. We began to wonder who provided the copious amounts of water needed on an ancient construction site and how challenging that would have been.

As outlined earlier, although our exercise was not quite on the experimental level on which Martínez et al. operated, as students we were able to gain knowledge by employing new methodology and also trained some of the skills crucial for researchers in any field: observation and note-taking.

Our personal reflections

Lisa:
Doing this practical exercise made me appreciate the dangerous process of concrete production and made me think about the people involved in this labour. I also wonder how they would have handled the transportation and storage of water, since it was already tedious and frustrating for us to manage the tap water in 1l plastic bottles...

We were also very precise with the timing of the individual steps, so I am curious how this would have been done on an ancient Roman construction site, where not everyone had a watch on their wrist. I feel like I came out of this exercise with more questions than before, but I am now asking more specific and productive questions.

My biggest takeaway, however, is that recording the process is extremely difficult. While taking notes, I was constantly relying on classmates to keep track of time and materials. I also quickly learned how much the layout of the recording sheet determines the information that is captured on it.

Figure 7: Students collaborating to consult the sources and record the process

Israt:
In my personal opinion, if we could watch some documentaries prior to the experiment on ancient Roman construction and how opus signinum was used, I would have felt a stronger connection to the process. We did this experiment on a previously made brick frame and we were not engaged in building it. If we were involved in that too, I think it would be a more complete experience.

Engaging with this experimental process was really new for me as I have never studied archaeology, but I am always a big fan of ancient architecture on sites and in museums, as it carries the histories of human ingenuity. So, even beyond our class content, this experiment made me gain new insights and an interest into ancient Roman construction.

Claudia:
This experiment made me realise how easy it is to take for granted modern daily life objects in their finished form and forget about the lengthy process that is usually needed to bring them to life. Making Roman concrete was a reminder for me to stay aware of the context in which technology and goods are brought up, but more so, who is behind their production.

More specifically, I believed questioning the manufacturing process was a good starting point to comprehend how vulnerable groups are oftentimes targeted within the labour market. Indeed, they are oftentimes the ones forced to work in precarious conditions and carry out dangerous tasks. In the context of Roman concrete, it was striking to me that women were probably the ones traditionally entrusted with the treacherous job of lime-slaking. Ultimately, this practical exercise allowed me to seek a greater understanding of the dependencies that shape my surroundings, even the ones that can sometimes seem invisible.

We would like to thank our lecturer, Dr. James Harland, for his extraordinary commitment in organising and executing this project with us.

Spending six months at the International Institute of Social History (IISH) as part of a mobility grant for early career researchers from the University of Bonn (Argelander Mobility Grant), Amsterdam, proved to be a deeply enriching and professional experience. As an early modernist focusing on Dutch colonialism and slavery in South Africa during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I found this opportunity to engage directly with Amsterdam’s complex historical and cultural fabric transformative. The city’s archives, museums, and architectural landmarks gave me valuable perspectives, weaving together stories of slavery, colonial exploitation, and resilience. This blog entry reflects on my experience, highlighting the rich historical resources Amsterdam offers to scholars and others interested in the history of slavery and colonialism.

The IISH: A Nexus of Social History, Slavery Studies, and International Collaboration

The IISH, where I was hosted from August 2024 to January 2025, is the leading research institute for the history of social movements. Its partnership with the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS) made it an ideal setting for my research. The institute’s vast archival collections focus on social movements, labor history, and the histories of inequality, with particular emphasis on global labor relations and systems of unfree labor—subjects central to the research at the BCDSS. The IISH fosters a collaborative and inclusive environment with formal and informal gatherings offering opportunities to exchange ideas with scholars, archivists, activists, and artists in residence.

If you spend some days in Amsterdam and are interested in the history of slavery and dependency, the following museums, exhibitions, and memorials will be interesting for you.

The Amsterdam City Museum and H’ART Museum

Figure 1: The Amsterdam Museum celebrates the city’s 750th Birthday with an exhibition. Picture taken by the author.

Luckily, my stay in Amsterdam coincided with the 750th anniversary of the city, which was first named “Amstelledamme” in a document from 1275. As part of the commemoration, the Amsterdam Museum offers an exhibition on the city’s multifaceted history. Of particular interest to me were exhibits on colonial history and slavery as well as those featuring entanglements between Dutch and German history. The museum is housed in a former city orphanage. The building itself tells a story about children in Amsterdam – some of whom became shipboys for the Dutch East India Company or were sent to the colonies as brides.

The exhibition inside the building showcases artifacts, objects, and topics in a chronological order on the history of Amsterdam in a large room. In the middle of this space is a smaller room displaying information on parentless children, orphanages, colonialism, slavery, and the criminal and punishment system, thereby challenging the otherwise positive narrative of the city. I learned, for example, that Alexander de Lavaux, who was born in Berlin, designed a map of Suriname (1737-1757) in which he included the destruction of Maroon communities of formerly enslaved, runaway slaves, and indigenous people. A fascinating map that can be explored on the website of the Rijksmuseum.

Also, the story of an enslaved servant named Christina from Batavia is exhibited here. After being brought from Batavia to Amsterdam, she sought freedom as a runaway but was captured and put into the Spinhuis, a form of prison and workhouse for women in early modern Amsterdam.

Figure 2: Patricia Kaer Senhout: Of Palimpsests and Erasure, 2021, picture taken by the author.

The H’Art Museum is in the same building and features artwork dedicated to the city of Amsterdam. It includes, for example, painting that engages with Sybilla Merian and Anton de Kom. Sybilla Merian was a German woman who traveled to Suriname in the seventeenth century where she created drawings and descriptions of plants and insects. Indigenous and enslaved women from Suriname deeply influenced her botanical and other knowledge. One of her pictures is memorialized by the artist Patricia Kaer Senhout. Another artwork memorializes Anton de Kom and his resistance to colonialism and injustice. Born in Suriname at the end of the nineteenth century, de Kom came to the Netherlands to study and became a leading figure in the Surinamese resistance movement against colonialism. After the occupation of the Netherlands by Germany in 1940, he contributed to the resistance against National Socialism and Fascism. In 1944, he was captured by the Gestapo and transported to a concentration camp, where he eventually died. His publication “Wir Sklaven van Suriname” was only recently, in 2021, translated and published in German. Together these two paintings inspire the viewer to reflect on how the stories of two people from different times and contexts nevertheless remain intertwined through places like Suriname, Amsterdam, and Germany. It makes me wonder how national history and historiography are getting in the way of telling these entangled stories of people, but also the complexities of slavery, dependency, and resistance.

The National Maritime Museum

Figure 3: The ceiling in the courtyard of the Maritime Museum, picture taken by the author.

The National Maritime Museum offers an important perspective on Amsterdam’s maritime and colonial history. Housed in a former naval storehouse built in 1656, the museum features a replica of a Dutch East India Company ship, which visitors can explore. I visited the museum together with colleagues from the global slavery projects of the IISH.

Figure 4: Picture of the VOC ship replica at the Maritime Museum, taken by the author.

A highlight of our visit was the exhibition “Shadows on the Atlantic”, which shows the history of the transatlantic slave trade and Dutch involvement as well as artistic reflections on it. Through personal stories and artifacts, the exhibition vividly illustrates the human cost of Dutch maritime power and explores the stories of the victims of this trade. The museum also houses an extensive library with historical maps, providing invaluable resources for researchers, including research fellowships.

Figure 5: Lisandro Suriel: “Herald of the sea: Ajé Soualiga,” 2019. Picture from the “Shadows of the Atlantic” exhibition, taken by the author.

The replica of the VOC ship and the exhibition on slavery represent different phases and ways of remembering and representing Dutch history. The replica ship represents a very playful, some would say glorifying, approach to the so-called Golden Age of the Netherlands. In contrast, the new exhibition on slavery highlights the darker side of this Golden Age and shows that the wealth of the Netherlands was accompanied by the exploitation of people in the colonies. I find the possibility to explore both historical traditions of remembrance in one museum very appealing. It makes tensions and ruptures visible for the visitors and allows them to reflect on different perspectives and approaches to the past.

The Rijksmuseum

For another day, I recommend visiting the Rijksmuseum, which has dedicated space to the history of colonialism. For example, it explores the Dutch colonial enterprises in Indonesia, Brazil, Suriname, and beyond, highlighting the impact of slavery on both the enslaved and their descendants, as well as the colonizers and their society.

Figure 6: Picture of two Indonesian kris exhibited at the Rijksmuseum, taken by the author.

A personal highlight was encountering a kris (keris: Malay dagger) in the Rijksmuseum’s collection. These daggers are often mentioned in the Dutch East India Company criminal records from the Cape of Good Hope that I read on a research trip to the archives in South Africa. It was eye-opening to see these objects with their cultural and spiritual significance in the museum. In the context of my research, they symbolize resistance and cultural identity of the enslaved people who were forcefully migrated from, in these cases, Southeast Asia to South Africa. What I also learned during my trip is that the kris is recognized by UNESCO as part of the “Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity,” underscoring its significance as material culture. I am excited to include these objects of cultural heritage into my research on slavery at the Cape colony and think further on how to integrate material objects into my analysis of written documents.

The Stedelijk Museum

Other art and history museums in Amsterdam also document and exhibit artefacts and themes interesting for scholars of slavery and dependency studies. The Stedelijk Museum integrates critical perspectives on colonialism and postcolonial voices into its modern art exhibitions. One particularly striking installation was Danielle Dean’s “True Red Ruin”, which examines the history of Elmina Castle in present-day Ghana. Elmina was a major site in the transatlantic slave trade, where West Africans were held captive before being transported across the Atlantic. Dean’s work uses art to interrogate the lingering effects of colonial violence but also shows creative ways of remembering and making use of the heritage sites.

Figure 7: Picture of the Video installation “True Red Ruin” by Danielle Deans in the Stedelijk Museum, taken by the author.

Reflecting on Amsterdam’s Layered History

Let me continue with another poignant experience during my time in Amsterdam, visiting the Dutch Holocaust Memorial of Names. This memorial honors the victims of the Holocaust. Jewish people from the Netherlands were transported to labor and concentration camps in Germany and Eastern Europe. A lot of them died there and were murdered. Their names are part of the memorial. Even though the memorial of names is different from the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, it had a similar contemplative and saddening effect on me. But it also serves as a stark reminder of Jewish history in Amsterdam and its resilience. Nearby, the Jewish Museum and the Sephardic Synagogue provide further opportunities for reflection on identity, faith, and survival.

Figure 8: Pictures of the Holocaust Memorial of Names taken by the author.

My time in Amsterdam has profoundly shaped my research and perspective. I now have a deeper appreciation for historical art (kris) and see the necessity of incorporating material culture into my research. I have also been inspired by contemporary artistic reflections (memorials, paintings, and installations) on challenging violent pasts. Additionally, I am curious to explore the entanglements between German and Dutch history in relation to slavery and dependency, and the question of how to overcome the national framework of these intertwined stories.

The Netherlands is currently undergoing a critical reassessment of its colonial history, with ongoing discussions about reparations and historical responsibility. In 2023, King Willem-Alexander issued an official apology for the Dutch state’s role in slavery and its lasting effects, reflecting a broader shift in public discourse. The planned National Slavery Museum, set to open in Amsterdam in 2030, will serve as a focal point for this reckoning, providing a dedicated space for research, education, and remembrance. These developments highlight the crucial role of historical scholarship and cultural institutions in fostering a deeper understanding of the legacy of slavery and systematic violence, both within academia and in society at large.

Recommendation if you want to explore Amsterdam’s slavery heritage on foot: Dienke Hondius, Nancy Jouwe, Dineke Stam, Jennifer Tosch, Annemarie de Wildt: Gids Slavernijverleden / Amsterdam Slavery Heritage Guide. LM Publisher, Volendam 2018.

Focusing on the modern era (c. 1450–1920), the conference sought to challenge static and binary concepts of freedom and unfreedom, instead emphasizing the fluidity and nuances of agency across local, regional, and global frameworks. Participants were encouraged to move beyond simplistic dichotomies and explore how individuals perceived, navigated, and negotiated unfreedom in contexts of slavery, captivity, serfdom, and other forms of oppression. This thematic approach framed the discussions around critical questions: What defines (un)freedom for individuals and collectives? How is it perceived and represented? What strategies were used to enforce, contest, or maneuver within these conditions?

The conference featured panels that explored the continuum between freedom and unfreedom, questioning whether these conditions were temporary or permanent, reversible or irreversible, linear or abrupt. Scholars examined the agency of the unfree, shedding light on how individuals and communities resisted, adapted, or even leveraged their status for social, political, or economic mobility.

Particularly thought-provoking debates emerged around the questions: Does unfreedom always equate to ‘social death’? Could individuals reshape or redefine their status within existing power structures? How are technologies and mechanisms of coercion produced in materiality?

Bringing together diverse case studies, the conference sought to identify overarching trends and their manifestations across various spaces and contexts. By examining nuanced experiences of (un)freedom, it aimed to foster comparative perspectives and offer new insights into the historical continuities, transformations, and lived experiences of (un)freedom.

Diversity of Perspectives and Participants: Enriching the Dialogue

One of the most enriching aspects of “(Un)Freedom in Global Perspective” was the sheer diversity of its participants—both in academic backgrounds and geographic representation. Scholars from institutions across Europe, America, and Africa brought expertise from fields such as history, anthropology, political science, and literary studies, fostering a truly interdisciplinary conversation.

The exchange of ideas thrived on the mix of early-career researchers and established scholars, creating a dynamic space where fresh perspectives met deep expertise. Adding to this richness, the conference’s broad thematic scope—spanning the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific—ensured that discussions reflected a wide range of historical and regional contexts. This diversity not only deepened the debates but also reinforced the need for global and comparative approaches in understanding (un)freedom across time and space.

Photo by the conference organizers. Unless otherwise noted, all photos in this post are by the author.

A key facilitator of this geographic and institutional diversity embraced by the conference was its hybrid format, which allowed researchers currently based in different parts of the world to join the discussion also via video calls.

The Participation of BCDSS: Collaborating with the Debate on (Un)Freedom

The Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS) played an active role in the conference, showcasing its interdisciplinary approach to the study of dependency and unfreedom across different historical contexts being well represented by three of its members: myself, Turkana Allahverdiyeva, and Professor Michael Zeuske.

As part of Panel 7: “Transatlantic Reflections of (Un)Freedom and Resistance,” my presentation, “Maritime Bondage: The Dual Role of Slavery and the Fight for Freedom on Board Slave Ships,” explored the participation of enslaved sailors aboard Portuguese slave ships in the early 19th century, particularly on routes between Brazil and the Mina Coast. Through case studies such as the seizure of the São João and the recapture of the Boa União, I examined how these sailors navigated the transatlantic slave trade, sometimes finding ways to exercise agency, secure limited freedoms, or pursue personal objectives despite the deeply coercive system they were part of.

Turkana Allahverdiyeva took part in Panel 6: “(Un)Freedom, Gender, and Family”, presenting “Agents of Change: Slaves in the Family Setting of Early Modern Crimean Khanate.” Her talk explored key aspects of her doctoral research, which examines non-elite household slavery in the Crimean Khanate. Drawing from Kadiasker court records from the early 18^th century, she approached how enslaved individuals in Crimean society could act as agents of change within familiar structures, offering valuable insights into the intersection of gender, family, and dependency.

Professor Michael Zeuske delivered the conference’s keynote lecture, titled “Global Histories of Slavery and the Self-Representations of Slaves.” His presentation delved into narratives and self-representations produced by enslaved individuals, challenging conventional historiography that often marginalizes their voices.

The themes explored at the conference—particularly the rejection of binary and static views of freedom and unfreedom—align closely with the BCDSS’s core mission. The event provided an invaluable opportunity for BCDSS researchers to engage in critical discussions, share insights, and gain new comparative perspectives on dependency and coercion. Such exchanges not only enrich individual research projects but also foster the collaborative networks essential for advancing the study of asymmetrical dependencies in historical and contemporary contexts.

Exploring the Complexities of (Un)Freedom in the Next Volume of Innsbrucker Historische Studien

Following the thought-provoking discussions at the “(Un)Freedom in Global Perspective” conference, the University of Innsbruck has announced the upcoming Volume 37 of Innsbrucker Historische Studien (IHS). Much like the conference itself, this publication will explore the complex historical dimensions of (un)freedom, bringing together diverse case studies, methodological approaches, and theoretical debates. By compiling key insights from the event, this volume will provide a broader academic audience with access to the discussions that unfolded.

Drawing on the frameworks developed by Marcel van der Linden and expanded by Matthias van Rossum, the volume will examine how individuals entered, navigated, and exited systems of coercion, bondage, and asymmetrical dependency. This perspective moves beyond just labor relations, considering other forms of coercive regimes that have shaped societies throughout history. The volume embraces a flexible conceptual approach, recognizing that different sources and analytical perspectives require varied focal points rather than a rigid framework.

Key Themes in the Upcoming Volume:

Multiplicity of (Un)Freedoms

The Continuum Between Slavery, Forced Labor, and Asymmetrical Dependency

Life Stories and the Temporality of Bondage

By bringing together these diverse perspectives, Volume 37 of IHS will offer fresh insights into how coercion, enslavement, and negotiated autonomy played out across different historical and geographic contexts. The goal is to foster a comparative understanding of (un)freedom, revealing how it was conceptualized, experienced, and challenged over time.

Set for publication at the end of 2025, this volume will be a major contribution to global historical studies, reflecting the rich interdisciplinary approaches and evolving research on dependency and unfreedom.

How Asymmetrical Dependency Helps Us Understand Unfreedom

A key takeaway from the conference was the value of historical research to understand asymmetrical dependencies and unfreedoms.

When we think about unfreedom, we often picture slavery, serfdom, or indentured labor—legally defined statuses that clearly separate the “free” from the “unfree.” But reality is far more complex. The concept of asymmetrical dependencies challenge this binary view, showing that unfreedom exists on a spectrum rather than as a fixed condition. Many people throughout history and today may not be legally enslaved but still find themselves trapped in coercive social or economic relationships due to systemic inequalities, lack of alternatives, or structural violence.

At its core, asymmetrical dependency highlights power imbalances in human relationships—whether in economic, political, or social contexts. Consider domestic workers with no legal protections, debt-bonded laborers who can never repay what they “owe,” or so-called “free” workers in colonial systems subjected to brutal control. These examples show how many forms of dependency mimic slavery in practice, even if they aren’t legally defined as such. This broader approach allows us to understand how unfreedom operates beyond strict legal categories, shaping lives in subtler but equally oppressive ways.

What makes this perspective even more valuable is its ability to recognize agency within constraint. Unlike views that depict the (un)free people as completely powerless, asymmetrical dependency helps us see how individuals navigate, resist, and sometimes reshape their conditions. Whether through small acts of defiance, economic maneuvering, or legal battles, people in dependent relationships often find ways to push back. By shifting our focus from rigid definitions of slavery to the fluid and contested nature of dependency, we gain a deeper understanding of how systems of unfreedom persist and evolve over time—not just in history but in our world today.

Why These Conversations Matter Today

The discussions at “(Un)Freedom in Global Perspective” were not just about the past—they offered critical insights into the present. Themes of forced labor, racialized incarceration, and economic coercion remain urgent today, reminding us that unfreedom is not just a historical condition but an ongoing reality for many. The conference challenged us to see freedom not as a fixed achievement but as a continuous struggle, shaped by legacies of oppression and resistance that still shape modern societies.

As we continue to explore these questions, we must also consider the ethical responsibilities of writing histories of unfreedom. How do we center the voices of the unfree, ensuring they are not just objects of study but active agents in the narratives we construct? The conference didn’t offer simple answers, but it opened up essential conversations that will undoubtedly shape future research on enslavement, agency, and historical memory.

View of the workshop’s opening session on Thursday, October 24^th. Unless otherwise noted, all photos in this post are by the author.

For this workshop, we wanted to do something new. Rather than bringing together dozens of scholars from around the world to present brief specialized papers (a laudable approach, of course), we invited four highly regarded experts in their respective fields to offer ‘masterclass-style’ presentations. Extensive hour-and-a-half-long discussions then followed these presentations. Though the lengthy conversations may have felt a bit like doctoral disputations for the scholars who sat in the ‘hot seat,’ they provided participants with an exciting opportunity to discuss both the talks and pre-circulated readings in detail. The assigned texts, most of which were selected from the main speaker’s bibliographies, deepened participants’ engagement with the theoretical perspectives outlined by the speakers.

Sara Eriksson offers opening remarks during the workshop’s opening session.

Our invited experts came from four disciplines. From anthropology and archeology, we welcomed Laurie A. Wilkie of UC Berkeley; from theology, we invited Keri L. Day of Princeton Seminary; from sociology, we invited Zine Magubane of Boston College; and for historiography, our discussion was guided by Karen Graubart from the University of Notre Dame.

In accordance with the goals of the workshop, each talk challenged us to consider both how dependency studies might benefit from a greater emphasis on intersectionality and how scholars who employ intersectionality might profit from historically informed dependency studies.

After each of the presentations, a senior scholar from or affiliated with the University of Bonn offered a response that kicked off rigorous discussions among participants. Natalie Joy, Associate Professor of History at Northern Illinois University (also a BCDSS Senior Fellow) and expert on Native American history as well as abolitionism, offered the response to Prof. Wilkie. Matthias Braun, Professor of Social Ethics at Bonn’s Faculty of Protestant Theology, who specializes in religious, political, and scientific ethics, offered the response to Prof. Day. Claudia Jarzebowski, BCDSS Professor for Early Modern History and Dependency Studies, whose work explores themes of trauma, violence, childhood, and gender through the lens of dependency, offered the response to Prof. Magubane. Last but certainly not least, Karoline Noack, Professor for the Anthropology of the Americas at the University of Bonn, whose work explores categories of social dependency in the pre-and post-colonial Americas, responded to Prof. Graubart.

Social media shoutout from the BCDSS PR Team: Prof. Dr. Jarzebowski opens the discussion round of Prof. Dr. Magubane’s talk. Photo by Buğra Nuri Duman.

Along with my fellow organizers, I also want to acknowledge the significant contributions of our BCDSS colleague, Danitza L. Márquez Ramírez. She not only helped us behind the scenes but also introduced and moderated the discussion of Prof. Graubart’s work.

Danitza Márquez Ramírez moderating a discussion session on the second day of the workshop.

We sought to create an environment in which discussions could be as free-flowing, wide-ranging, and in-depth as possible. Thus, the notion that one might summarize insights gleaned from our two days together in a single blog post is a bit far-fetched. So, my aim in the rest of this post will be to relay an unsystematized amalgam of the insights I gleaned from the talks, with the expectation that other participants may have different takeaways.

Prof. Wilkie’s talk, which exemplified the American scholarly tradition of combining the approaches of anthropology and archeology, outlined an ‘archeology of care’ in relation to her studies of historic institutional sites in the United States.

She placed archeological findings in conversation with critical analysis of the ways that eugenicist ideas shaped scientific literature and praxis of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She drew upon ‘crip theory,’ Critical Disability Studies (CDS), and archeological work (thus, practicing ‘crip archeology’ in the context of, for example, plantation archeology) to show how, at the turn of the twentieth century, government-operated institutions– including those dedicated to healthcare– could function as “debilitating spaces.”

Moreover, in a section on the relationship between normative sources and archeological findings, she noted that, in many systems, “it is in the space between policy and implementation that violence enters into” the frame. In contrast to such systems, she outlined how “communities of care” often emerge amidst broader relationships of asymmetrical dependency. She also showed that, while, in common parlance, the receipt of care implies dependency, “the history of disability rights was a struggle for independence…” Additionally, contrary to the stereotype of the independent caregiver and the dependent recipient of care, caregivers were and are often also considered disabled.

Prof. Dr. Wilkie responds to questions and comments during the discussion session following her talk.

In addition to these insights, the extended discussion of Prof. Wilkie’s contribution brought to the fore the importance of oral historiography to the Cluster’s work. Indeed, even for studies of ancient history or archeology, where contemporaries of the subject under consideration might no longer be available for conversation, oral history interviews within related communities can be an excellent resource for historically informed dependency studies.

Prof. Day’s talk focused on enslaved and formerly enslaved Black women’s religious cultures. She raised questions about dependency, agency, and what she called “Spirit Power.”

She shed new light on the ethical ambiguities, negotiations, and complex practices of freedom deployed by enslaved and formerly enslaved women in the late-nineteenth-century United States. The experiences of these women often included assertions of their reproductive rights, which challenged reigning notions of Christian morality in ways that were “less absolute and more paradoxical and ambiguous.”

Prof. Dr. Day during her talk.

The discussion focused both on Prof. Day’s presentation and her recent publications, which illuminate the crucial role played by Black women in the advent of the Azusa Street revivals of 1906 and beyond. In her recent monograph, Azusa Reimagined: A Radical Vision of Religious and Democratic Belonging and related publications, Prof. Day shows how Black women shepherded emergent practices of faith, which were shaped by the crucible of enslavement in the non-statist, but nonetheless, politically charged atmosphere of Azusa.

Prof. Day’s reflection on “Spirit Power,” a concept she is continuing to refine in the wake of the discussion at the workshop, also generated passionate dialogue within the group. Academic theologians were a minority in the room. Even so, we quickly bridged perceived disciplinary divides. From my perspective, it seems clear that Prof. Day’s work offered an exhibit in the case for theological research that is not just (or primarily) a search for the deus absconditus (the hidden God) up there, but rather a reflection on experiences of the divine in the practices– the doings and sayings– of the long-silenced.

Furthermore, the role of cosmologies and cosmovisions in both constructing and overcoming dependencies was a red thread that ran throughout the group’s discussion of both Prof. Wilkie’s and Prof. Day’s talks. A key insight from our conversations pertained to the importance of acknowledging the complex ways in which ‘care webs’ and networks of asymmetrical dependency can often be intertwined. Webs of care, like ‘Spirit Power’ (or, at least, spiritual power), can be liberative, but they can also become webs that entangle and power that dominates.

Prof. Magubane’s talk focused on the legacies of slavery and offered a pointed response to “slavery and its legacies” discussions in U.S. history and memory. She placed a special emphasis on how these discussions (both past and present) have raised questions about identity without significant attention to questions of class.

This consequential insight, which I have only begun to process with the help of various BCDSS colleagues (especially Joe Biggerstaff and Eva Lehner), is one that becomes somewhat obvious once named but is nonetheless very easily missed.

Prof. Dr. Magubane during her talk.

In addition to offering reflections on the state of historiography and public memory, as a historical sociologist, Magubane also offered a critical evaluation of intersectionality theory in general. Intersectionality theory was developed in the context of the law and the representation of people from different backgrounds in the labor market. Along with other scholars in recent years, Magubane emphasized that structural inequality must be understood not only in terms of the identity categories of gender and race but also in terms of class inequalities. In this regard, she introduced us to the context in which American discourses on race, gender, and class developed, emphasizing slavery as the original sin of racial inequality and racism.

Given that I study theology and church history, it is perhaps unsurprising that Prof. Magubane’s use of various theological notions as sociological concepts is repeatedly addressed in my notes from her session. For example, paraphrasing the great twentieth-century American theological ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr, during the discussion, one person suggested, “Sin is such a useful sociological concept that if it did not exist, we would have to invent it.”

Prof. Magubane also deployed other terms that can easily be described as ‘theological:’ among them, reconciliation, confession, penance, and redemption as the idea of the already and the not yet. Of course, as our discussions made clear, in sociology or other disciplines, the use of theological language can illuminate or obscure; it can concretize, but it can also abstract.

Scholars often blush at the notion that such conversations can lead to reconsiderations of the ethical or even novel questions about healthy discourse in our fields (i.e., the nature of ‘good’ theology, good anthropology, good sociology, good historiography, etc.) – a highly normative mode of thought, indeed. Nevertheless, our discussion frequently touched on concerns related to professional ethics and considerations of the “Good society,” which cannot (and, perhaps, should not) be uncritically separated from the practice of historically informed dependency studies.

Prof. Graubart’s talk, which drove a fruitful discussion of historiographic theories and methodologies, focused on the presence of Black women in Spanish colonial legal records.

Her presentation invited participants into a complex discussion of the multi-vectored dependencies and intersectional relational forms present in the Iberian Atlantic world. For example, she showed how legal formulae can reveal not only pro-forma arguments related to the lives of enslaved or formerly enslaved people but also how people of diverse (and contextually constructed) racial backgrounds and roles in society actively participated in the legal system.

Prof. Dr. Graubart during her talk.

Her contribution made clear the importance of careful grammatical and orthographic analysis of historical sources, which are essential to studies of asymmetrical dependency in the context of normative regimes. She showed how, despite their formulaic rigidity, scrutiny of legal records can reveal historiographically significant situational attestations. By analyzing these attestations, we can move beyond the perspective of the archives (which is often shaped by that of the hegemonic authority) and listen for the long-silenced voices of people who pled their cases in legal proceedings.

In addition to the methodological insights she offered, Prof. Graubart also challenged the BCDSS to think carefully about each aspect of the theoretical framework its researchers employ. During a penetrating discussion of analytical categories in relation to intersectionality theory, she made clear that we would do well to reflect more carefully on how we understand the complex web of relations between categories as descriptions of material conditions and categories as discursive heuristics. The potency of this insight becomes especially apparent when we consider the interdisciplinary context and occasional miscommunications between researchers from different fields within the cluster. Perhaps it would be reductionistic to allow either understanding of analytical categories to have the final word, but a better understanding of the intersections and divergences between the two perspectives may be a key site for further reflection within historically informed dependency studies.

This brief reflection has only scratched the surface of what we discussed. Our conversations were simultaneously broad and deep, contextually grounded and robustly theory-reflective.

Based on the feedback received from BCDSS members in attendance, it seems clear that the model developed for this workshop commends itself to future use. Our discussions showed how fruitful it can be to place historically informed dependency studies in conversation with intersectionality theory.

Dr. Eva Lehner offering remarks during one of the sessions on Day II.

The Research Area E discussion paper, Asymmetrical Dependencies and Intersectionality, articulates an understanding of intersectionality primarily as a concept. The authors state,

“The concept of intersectionality states that social formulations do not exist in isolation but are instead linked by complex and interwoven relationships. Intersectionality is thus based on the assumption that all factors informing the identity and social position of a person are inextricably connected.

Anyone familiar with the scholarly discourse around intersectionality knows that this is just one of many ways to deploy the term/concept/theory. Aside from raising what are, to my mind, important questions about whether intersectionality really does aim to address “all factors” informing identity and social position (rather than focusing on those that result in social marginalization in a given context), others have also understood intersectionality differently on a more basic level. As the discussion paper itself notes, others have treated it primarily as an approach, a theory in itself, as research praxis or methodology, or as a tool for policy analysis in legal discourse.

As the analytical concept of asymmetrical dependency and the praxis of asymmetrical dependency research converge and continue to evolve into what some have called “historically informed dependency studies,” – which could be conceptualized as an emergent field of inquiry– scholars should continue to reflect on how the work of the BCDSS relates to other frameworks like intersectionality.

More robust dialogue between proponents of asymmetrical dependency as an analytical concept and advocates for other extant frameworks is needed as the BCDSS continues to develop its collective understanding of historically informed dependency studies.

Note on quotations: Unless otherwise noted, all quotations in this blog are from contemporaneous notes that I took during the discussions. Any mistakes are my own.

Laura Hartmann (BCDSS PhD Coordinator)

Over the past six years, the BCDSS has built a growing network of partnerships with international institutions and researchers. These collaborations have become a cornerstone of our work, allowing us to connect with like-minded scholars and broaden our impact. One of the best examples of these expanding connections is the annual International PhD Seminar on Slavery, Servitude, & Extreme Dependency. This event is a joint effort organized by the BCDSS, the Leiden Slavery Studies Association (LSSA) at Leiden University (NL), and the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull (UK). This year the seminar was also supported by funding from the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies (RIAS).

The event was held at the Johan Huizinga Building of the University of Leiden. (Photo by Bahar Bayraktaroğlu)

The seminar provides an invaluable opportunity for emerging scholars to present their research and engage in critical discussions on their work. Over the years, it has become a vital component of our PhD program. Each year, it brings together a diverse group of researchers from different disciplines, all exploring various forms of (strong) asymmetrical dependency. This interdisciplinary exchange offers a wide range of perspectives on the research presented, encouraging PhD researchers to view their own work from new angles, which enhances both the scope and depth of their studies.

The supportive environment of the seminar fosters open dialogue, inviting participants to ask questions and engage in thoughtful discussions. The constructive feedback from fellow PhD candidates and experienced professors creates a space where participants feel free to explore ideas without judgment.

To our deepest regret, we had to cope without the expertise of Professor Trevor Burnard from the Wilberforce Institute, who passed away this summer. We will remember his valuable contributions to the PhD seminar and his dedication to supporting early-career researchers!

Thoughts and impressions of BCDSS participants

Bahar Bayraktaroğlu (BCDSS PhD Researcher)

My discussion, “What Was A Child?” focused on children in dependence in nineteenth-century Ottoman Constantinople, emphasizing the richness and complexity of historical childhood experiences. I addressed the difficulties of speaking about a singular “child” archetype, especially under differing forms of dependencies. I hope that the historical trajectories of “John,” “Reşe,” and “Yasemin” illustrated to us how childhoods could have differed greatly; they were indeed complex and peculiar. Undoubtedly, the gender and interwoven identities of these children played a crucial role there. Instead of seeking to define a single notion of the child, we need to historicise each one and engage critically with sources to better grasp each child's peculiar case.

Through the questions and feedback offered by my fellow participants, I was able to identify the limitations of my project and refine my argument. I also had my intellectual horizons expanded by listening to presentations that were outside the scope of my field. I believe the same was true for other speakers!

Slavery walking tour through Leiden. (Photo by Laura Hartmann)

My favorite parts of the seminar include the “slavery walking tour” on the first day. Being physically in the streets and visiting certain places where the history of slavery in the Dutch Empire touched the city of Leiden was a well-thought-out activity for the gathering.

Amalia S. Levi (BCDSS PhD Researcher)

This was the third year I participated in the PhD seminar, having attended the seminars at Hull (2022) and Bonn (2023). This year, the absence of Prof. Trevor Burnard, whose role in and contributions to this seminar have been instrumental, was felt by all participants. For me, the value of the seminar lies in the opportunity of getting feedback from renowned faculty in slavery studies, as well as being together with a community of other PhD students. Learning about forms of dependency in different parts of the world and different periods of time is an enriching experience, and the different methodological approaches are inspirational. I find the seminar a great learning opportunity because of the casual, collegial, and safe environment for cross-pollination that it offers.

Amalia S. Levi, introducing her research. (Photo by Bahar Bayraktaroğlu)

In previous years, I presented specific chapters from my dissertation that were life stories of enslaved people in Jewish households in early modern Bridgetown, Barbados. This year, I chose to focus on a specific concept that is central to my research, that of the household. I explored the ways that Jewish particularities in these households shape the experience of the free and unfree members living within, particularly that of the enslaved people. Additionally, I examined how record-keeping aspects and archival trajectories of documents that are tied to the household define what primary sources we locate—and why.

Mariana Kelly da Costa Rezende (BCDSS Doctoral Guest Researcher)

The Bonn/Leiden/Hull PhD Seminar was my first PhD seminar during my second (of four) years of the PhD at the Fluminense Federal University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In Leiden, I was able to share part of my dissertation on anti-vagrancy policies over minors in the beginning of the Brazilian Republic (1890–1927). In the paper, I presented about the construction of anti-vagrancy legislation and the creation of institutions to collect vagrant children in the turn of the XIX to the XX century Brazil, highlighting the racial aspect of both as part of the abolition and post-abolition process.

Presenting her research to the audience: Mariana Rezende (Fluminense Federal University in Rio de Janeiro). (Photo by Laura Hartmann)

Even though each researcher’s presentation was about a different place and time period, all of them dialogued, not only by the “slavery, servitude, and extreme dependency” aspects of their work, but also about intersectionality between gender, race, age and family issues. The pre-circulation of the papers allowed us to engage with each other’s research, even before the presentations. The long time for discussion allowed even further exchange between the candidates, where bibliography and sources were shared. The careful reading of the professors was also an important part of the seminar, bringing many suggestions and tips for our research. All collaborations added much to my current writing, helping with the path to go further in the global aspect of my research and with the discussions on the formation of national states, parenthood, mobility, and labour house discipline.

Being a part of the PhD Seminar in Leiden was a valuable experience for my academic life. Not only for enriching my research with new questions and perspectives, but also because this kind of space creates connections that are kept afterwards, where we’re still able to share the PhD experience with colleagues, which makes this journey less lonely.

“[S]har[ing] the PhD experience with colleagues [...] makes this journey less lonely." Mariana Kelly da Costa Rezende. (Photo by Bahar Bayraktaroğlu)

Joseph Biggerstaff (BCDSS PhD Researcher)

This was my second time as a participant in the Bonn-Leiden-Hull Graduate Seminar on Slavery, Servitude, and Dependency. I truly enjoyed my time in Leiden, a bustling college town with a thriving student population, and felt welcomed by our Dutch colleagues.

At the seminar, I was most impressed by the different ways early career researchers approach dependency and slavery in terms of scale. Fred Bricknell (Hull) focused on a single community of enslaved people on a plantation in Berbice, applying the novel theoretical framework of “moral ecology” to examine the different ways the community leveraged their knowledge of the environment and built infrastructure against overseers and colonial authorities. Benedetta Chizzolini (Tel Aviv University) and Amalia Levi (BCDSS) similarly looked to the level of the micro on galley ships in the Mediterranean and Jewish households in the eastern Caribbean to examine the importance, and sometimes ambivalence, of identity in these coercive and carceral settings. Pouwel van Schooten (Leiden) and Britt van Duijvenvoorde (IISH, Amsterdam) applied a geographical lens. Pouwel van Schooten took an actor-centered approach to manumission in an island-setting of Galle, Sri Lanka, whereas Britt van Duijenvoorde looked along the very long eastern “Coromandel coast” of south Asia (modern-day India) to pinpoint the entanglement of enslavability and access to vital resources.

These various approaches to scale seek to mediate the limits of evidence (archive) with an urgency to write an actor-centered histories of dependency and slavery. To me, these innovative approaches to scale also suggest an underlying critical reflex against larger, somewhat homogenizing frameworks of “Atlantic” or “American” slavery. To say the least, I left the seminar feeling inspired.

Joseph Biggerstaff receives feedback from historian Karwan Fatah-Black during the lively discussion following his presentation. (Photo by Bahar Bayraktaroğlu)

Like Bahar, I found one of the highlights of the experience to be the slavery walking tour provided by Britt van Duijenvoorde. One of the highlights of doing a PhD at the BCDSS is the support we are given to build networks with scholars in other institutes beyond the borders of Germany, which gives you an opportunity to reflect on your positionality as a researcher. In this regard, the “slavery walking tour” of Leiden was a unique opportunity to reflect on the political atmosphere in the Netherlands at this moment. Compared with the United Kingdom, the Netherlands is only beginning to fully confront its entanglement with slavery and colonialism, and the work being carried out by early career researchers, combined with the political activism in the form of the walking tour, is at the forefront of a potential reckoning.

So, what do we take with us from this year’s PhD seminar in Leiden?

Laura Hartmann (BCDSS PhD Coordinator)

Apart from the stimulating professional insights and academic debates, we were all once again reminded of the fact that, despite the diversity of participants and their research areas, there is one thing they all have in common: they are on their PhD journey. A journey that is exciting but also exhausting, inspiring, as well as isolating, challenging, and life-changing.

As the coordinator of the BCDSS PhD program, I'm here to support our PhDs on this journey. Drawing from my very own experience, I can say: Make the best of learning with and from each other on this journey, but also keep in mind that every journey is unique and individual - so make it YOUR journey!

Leiden by night. (Photo by Bahar Bayraktaroğlu)

If you are interested in reading more, check out the past blog posts for the seminars in Hull (2022) and Bonn here and here (2023).

Unfortunately, if you want to compete in academia, you have to complete all stages efficiently. Academia feels especially merciless in Germany due to the Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz: young scholars seem to be interchangeable since they always regrow. The latest report by the Joint Science Center has shown that in Germany, the proportion of women in academia drops with each qualification level after graduation (so-called leaky pipeline). Considering that the timing for both a PhD project and forming a family often coincide (people in their late 20s and 30s), a link between both could be made.

The graph shows the proportion of men (blue shades) and women (green shades) along the qualification and career levels in academia in the last decades. Despite the overall increasing proportion of women at all levels, it continues to drop after graduation. This "leaky pipeline" persists. (https://www.gwk-bonn.de/fileadmin/Redaktion/Dokumente/Papers/Heft_91_Homepage_Stand_07_10_2024.pdf)

Photo by Claire Conrad

At the BCDSS, several PhD candidates either became a mother or father or brought their children with them. We wanted to gain insight into the topic and asked them to share their experiences. What does it mean to manage the two biggest and most identity-forming projects in life at the same time?

1) The experience of becoming/being a parent has changed my academic goals, values and perspective on academia - can you relate to this statement?

• “Balancing the demands of the PhD with parenthood inevitably slowed down my academic progress. One of my main priorities was bringing my daughter to Germany and helping her adjust to a new cultural environment. This transition required significant time and attention. Supporting her through this adjustment was essential for her well-being, and, as a parent, it became a crucial goal for me.”

• “I feel less stressed about work and more productive at the same time.”

• “I have become more self-secure about my values and priorities. My family comes first, the expectations of others are secondary. Academia is still not supportive of young scholars or mothers, so take what you can, give nothing back.”

• “My priorities have definitely shifted and I would say that my aspirations within academia have been tempered through becoming a parent. Trying to find my own balance while trying to figure out what example I want to set for my children is hard.”

2) What was/is your biggest academic and/or parental challenge connected to parental leave?

• “Trying to organise the administrative side of parental leave while not fully understanding the system was its own challenge. We got there in the end, but that was something… Going back to work after parental leave, it was freeing being able to rediscover the subject that I had loved my whole life, but I felt so immensely guilty for that. Leaving my children was scary, I had to trust that my way was not the only way and that was difficult. When I was pregnant it was easy to know exactly what the right thing to do was to keep my children healthy. Having to trust other people with my hearts, and needing to for my own sanity and wellbeing, was the hardest.”

• “Due to my previous experience, I knew that I needed a different kind of stimulation alongside caring for a newborn, so I kept my parental leave short. However, getting back into my topic and work rhythm and keeping it going was and still is a challenge. And then there is the internal voice that either I don’t work enough on my thesis or I don’t spend enough quality time with my kids.”

• “Parental leave is only paid for one year but depending on the child’s birthday, there is a gap until daycare can start. The flexibility of home office is an advantage. But working on a PhD cannot be done in little time slots of 30 minutes and many times, this has been the only time I had in a day. And as the more flexible parent work wise, most of the care work remains with me while my partner who works outside academia just sticks to their normal working hours. This is challenging for the relationship.”

• “To continue working despite this, but to always be there for my child. You lose touch with the others a bit.”

3) How has the adaptation to becoming/being a parent in academia been going? What has been enriching? What do you do to find a balance?

• “As working parents, my partner and I have structured our routines to accommodate both our professional responsibilities and our child's needs. While adapting to new environments can be particularly challenging for children, we have invested time and energy to ensure a smooth transition for her. Maintaining this balance during busy phases, such as dissertation writing, has been demanding but also incredibly rewarding. The greatest satisfaction comes from knowing that despite the pressures of work and research, we are able to provide our child with the quality time and attention she deserves.”

• “I definitely feel like I am adapting better now, but it’s taken a while and how ‘well-adapted’ I feel changes on a daily basis. Ensuring some me-time has definitely helped. Once a week I have a video call with some old university friends in the evening that is much needed time to reclaim a small portion of sanity. I don’t actually think a real ‘balance’, has been struck yet…”

• “There is no balance so far and the mantra “this is just a phase” helps, but then the phases are very long. It is very enriching to spend time with my child. It helps me to worry less about work related issues and feel less pressure because I know that there is something much more important than work and career in the world.”

• “I set deadlines for short tasks I want to achieve this week.”

• “I try to focus as much as possible only on the dissertation while at work, and at home basically ignore everything work-related.”

4) Would you say that you have to take back a step from your own research project due to becoming/being a parent?

• “I currently see the break after birth as more of an advantage, as it has given me some distance from my project and some things are now clearer to me and I have been able to rethink a lot of things where I was already too stuck in my head before.”

• “No, on the contrary, being a single mom to an exceptionally smart 9-year-old has never made me step away from my research; instead, it has constantly motivated and inspired me to persevere, with the goal of making my son proud of his mother.”

• “Yes, and I am happy to spend time with my children.”

• “I miss the flexibility to travel for workshops, conferences, field research and the like.”

• “I feel like after taking a step back, I am finally able to get back into my project, but I don’t feel like I will ever be able to give it the same level of commitment as my priority will always be my children. I feel conflicted, because to secure the future I would like for my children, I need to secure my career. But with limited help and having more than one child, it can be hard to balance and no matter where I place my priorities, I feel guilty for letting the other side down.”

• “I can certainly say that I would handle my dissertation in a very different way if I did not have kids. It gives you another type of focus if you cannot put all of your energy in your topic, and I think it helps me not to get too much into all the interesting aspects of my research and get lost in them. So, in a way yes, I take a step back, but I don’t see it as all negative.”

5) Has your perspective on parents in academia shifted?

• “Definitely! I have a deeper consideration for the amount of sacrifices that women must make for the sake of their careers; if they have children I feel the conflict of sacrificing your time with career for family and vice versa, and if they don’t, I wonder now how many women sacrificed having a family for the sake of career advancement.”

• “Absolutely! They have completely different prerequisites than people without children. Lack of sleep, family-unfriendly conferences, etc.”

• “Parenthood has taught me the immense value of mutual support. Balancing both parenting and academic life is demanding, and I have come to realize just how essential it is to have a strong support system. Whether this support comes from my partner, family, or colleagues, it has been crucial in helping me manage both my family commitments and the pressures of my PhD. It serves as a reminder that no one can do it all alone, and the power of shared support is truly invaluable.”

• “I often think that single parents in academia either have super powers or are constantly living on the edge. Probably a mix of both, depending on the day.”

• “Being a parent while conducting PhD research comes with many challenges, but with strong determination, motivation, inspiration, and a supportive institutional system and colleagues, it is achievable. Now, I realize how much determination it takes to balance parenting and academic commitments. It has shown me that being a parent doesn't limit one's ability to contribute meaningfully to academia; rather, it can be a source of strength and inspiration.”

6) Do you feel that both, people and institutions, are supportive of parents in the BCDSS / in academia? What do you feel is being done well, what else could be helpful?

• “I do not feel as though I could have continued doing my PhD after having children if I had been anywhere else. On the whole I think I have been incredibly lucky to have had my children while employed with the BCDSS. Most issues were down to language barriers rather than any intent to inconvenience or due to mental health struggles or administrative bureaucracy. I think that it could have been foreseen a little better just how comfortable and stable a position this is for starting a family and that more structures (family room in office/ family friendly times for workshops etc) could have been in place sooner, and some of these things could still be worked on.”

• “In my closest PhD environment and especially from my supervisor, I feel 100% supported. I also felt support from the cluster, especially when it came to the flexibility of parental leave, although I still have the feeling that they would have preferred it if the work had been completed quickly without having a baby first.”

• “Support structures do exist for everyday life concerns and people are mostly supportive. But the over all world of academia is not supportive of mothers and children. I think that an academic career is not family-friendly since it demands high flexibility: move around every few years for job positions AND lectures and networking events seem to ALWAYS be in the evening hours when, during pregnancy, I was extremely tired and which now is when my child needs me most. I feel excluded from the academic cultural community. Networking, which is supposed to be essential for a career, is more difficult.”

• “Overall, I feel that having a baby during my PhD in the BCDSS I got a lot of support. However, I also realized that this is not normal within academia. From my experience, it often appears that having a family is seen in a very dated light. You are supposed to go to fieldwork on your own, it is made hard to take your family, even just your child, with you. Noticeably, the classes of this winter semester start at the same time than school holidays, so students with schoolchildren have to skip the first classes.”

• “Yes, I feel that both people and institutions in the BCDSS are supportive of parents, especially my experience as a single mother has been positive. BCDSS has been very accommodating, for example, supporting my son's participation in summer schools while I conducted archival research in Istanbul and London during the summer holidays. This was incredibly helpful as it allowed me to focus on my work while knowing my son was engaged and cared for. The flexibility offered has been essential in managing my dual roles as a mother and researcher.”

7) Do you have a piece of advice for fellow PhD’s that are currently involved in this topic?

• “I’ve learned that the time spent with my child and nurturing a strong parental bond far outweighs any professional or research accomplishments. Being present for my child and fostering that emotional connection is more important than career advancement. Children benefit most from their parents' presence and attention, and nothing can replace the value of being there for them during their formative years.”

• “Try to let go of perfectionism in academia and in family matters. In many instances, just doing the bare minimum is enough and it will not matter in the long run. Instead, prioritize and remember what it is that will matter in the years to come.”

• “Form a peer group together with at least one other PhD parent. Share your experience and your doubts, suffer, enjoy, reflect and grow together. This helps to put your own mind carousel into perspective.”

• “Ask for help. One of my biggest problems has been asking for help because I felt like I needed to earn it which is not true. You deserve to feel capable and no one can manage parenthood and an academic career alone. It doesn’t make you a failure and it doesn’t make you weak.”

• “Keep your paperwork.”

Photo by Lena Muders

Doing a PhD is a stressful and rewarding challenge, and so is being a parent. Combining these adventurous undertakings leads to PhD-parents experiencing a similar yet completely different journey toward the title, “Dr.”. We are all in the same storm but sailing different ships through it. The double mental load of planning a thesis, organizing literature, researching on field trips goes hand in hand with organizing medical appointments, managing childcare and family’s quality time. The answers we received from our colleagues clearly support this.

One keyword that emerged from our brief survey is “priority:” the changing of priorities after becoming a parent, having to adapt one’s own priorities, and balancing the needs of many people in personal as well as work life. In many cases, the bond between parent and child(ren) and the time spent with them is the focus. But, at the same time, several underline the push in academic motivation received because of them. The wish to create a strong emotional bond is expressed alongside the wish to set a good example for the children, showing them that raising a loving family is not a decision against seeking professional fulfillment. It can be said that relationships (parent-child, parents, parents-academic environment) are an important aspect of being able to manage and advance on both the personal and professional levels. This underlines how important it is to create and expand support for families in academia so that the choice of a career in academia in combination with healthy family life is/becomes a realistic and normal option.

Reading about our colleague’s experiences and perspectives has been insightful, inspiring and a good mental health exercise. Our heartfelt thanks to you, who have contributed, for being so open! You are doing an amazing job!

The roadside scenery was a stark contrast to the Dutch-Baroque palace we visited that morning. Ransmeier, a professor of modern Chinese history at the University of Chicago who delivered a keynote address at the "Children, Dependency, and Emotions in the Early Modern World, 1500-1800: Archival and Visual Narratives," conference the week before, was part of a group who joined a post-conference excursion from Bonn to Oranienbaum, Dessau, and Halle.

One might raise their eyebrows at the thought of taking nearly twenty international researchers to this area. It's not exactly a tourist destination. This is where the far-right political party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), has recently made major electoral gains. While today, the region is seen as isolated and out of step with the rest of the country, it was once a major crossroads in Europe.

Just before starting a position as a cluster professor at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies in 2021, Claudia Jarzebowski visited the palace of Oranienbaum (Orange Tree Palace). This was not her first time in the area. While teaching history at the Freie Universität Berlin, Jarzebowski often took students to see historical sites located near enough to Berlin that they could be visited on day trips. Ask Jarzebowski about the area, and she will exclaim with passion that it "was one of the centers of Early Modern Europe and one of many centers in the early modern world."

The history is indeed multifaceted. The palace and the adjacent village were built by Henriette Catharina (1637-1708), a princess of the House of Orange-Nassau, in the seventeenth century. Henriette was the granddaughter of William the First (the Orange One). After marrying a German prince, the ambitious Catherina redeveloped the region, which had been devastated during the Thirty Years’ War. Much of the history is well-documented, but historians have neglected the important fact that inherited colonial wealth funded the entire project. As Professor Jarzebowski found in 2021, visual remnants of this history—including a wall panel depicting the sale of a child in a tropical setting– can be found throughout the property.

Fast forward two years to late summer 2023 at a meeting in Bonn. In an application to the DAAD to co-fund a project to research the global phenomenon of child slavery and dependency in the early modern period, we had underscored how the image referenced above inspired our theoretical intervention.

The sale of a child is one of many visual topoi that appear at different times and places throughout the early modern period, yet evidence of child slavery is often hard to find in archives. Addressing a methodological problem of sources with a public history angle, focusing on Oranienbaum, was definitely the added value of our application. We intended to keep our promise to the DAAD to engage somehow with the site. In an era of massive Deutsche Bahn failures, however, the idea of making the odyssey from Bonn to Oranienbaum with a large group of people after an intense three-day conference seemed daunting, to say the least.

We also never planned to have a baby on board! Our team member from Australia, Kristie Flannery, joined the excursion with her entire family, which included a baby, Gabby, whom we collectively adored from the first instance. Accommodating the needs of a young family was not something we had considered, but thanks to Julia Schmidt's expert planning, each minor detail was taken into consideration.

Predictably, the excursion started with train delays and cancellations. Miraculously, we made it from Bonn to Hanover to Magdeburg and finally to Dessau, only one hour or so later than scheduled. Our accommodation at the Dessau Bauhaus Hotel provided another historical layer. The Hotel is the former Walter Gropius studio building, built in the 1920s, where art and design students worked and lived to experience firsthand a modern way of living. Today, the site has UNESCO World Heritage status.

The Bauhaus Dessau Hotel, the former Walter Gropius studio building, was opened in 1926 and obtained UNESCO World Heritage Status in 1996.

After a good night's rest, we rose early and ventured to Oranienbaum. On arrival, we met the caretaker of the property, who led us on a tour through the palace and then to the gardens. In the house, our attention was directed to the material culture left by Henriette Catharina, including remnants of leather wallpaper, several hundred vases and other glassware, and an array of orientalist ephemera.

From 1683, Henriette Catharina, princes of Orange-Nassau, had the Oranienbaum palace erected according to the plans of Dutch architect Cornelius Ryckwaert. It is an example of Dutch-Baroque architecture and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Oranienbaum is a Dutch-Baroque palace with an interior that speaks to the unique strategies of the House of Orange. Women like Henriette Catharina intentionally displayed objects of colonial wealth. In one room, for example, there is a portrait of Henriette's mother adorned with a feather, "recently imported from Brazil," historian Susan Broomhall speculated.

Broomhall, who, along with Claudia Jarzebowski, supervised the DAAD-UA project leading up to the excursion, has recently co-authored a book about dynastic colonialism and "Orangeism," titled Dynastic Colonialism: Gender Materiality and the Early Modern House of Orange-Nassau (Routledge, 2016). In the book she and co-author Jacqueline Van Gent argue for the centrality of women to the dynasty. Portraits, oil paintings, and other visual media like ceramic tiles connected with the house circulated widely throughout Europe as a form of propaganda for Orange power. Women were crucial to perpetuating this influence as major consumers and patrons of these works. This blend of conspicuous consumption, branding, and strategic patronage was unique, as Broomhall explained to me, because it flew against the grain of normative behavior for a Protestant dynasty.

The wall panel depicting the sale of a child found in Oranienbaum palace.

Art historian and Ph.D candidate Danielle Sensabaugh, University of Florida, interprets the wall panel.

As we made our way through the many rooms and halls of the palace, we finally reached the wall panel. Together, our group closely examined the piece and reflected on the potential meanings inscribed in the image. Henriette was actively involved in the construction of the house, and it is plausible that she personally chose, or at least approved of, the depiction and considered it to be congruent with the overall theme of her home, an implicit celebration of European colonialism. The other two panels depict coercive acts of labor, harvesting sugar and carrying materials, in a troubled tropical pastoral setting.

After the tour of the gardens, many of our group collapsed in the front grass of the palace for a hard-earned break, but a few of us were eager to see the village of Dessau. I ventured into town, which was built as a grid with an axial orientation to the palace and further to the main residence of Henriette Catharina and her husband, 12 km away in Wörlitz. I was challenged by the empty streets beyond the perimeter of the palace. At first, I chuckled after seeing a few cats, all of them orange. The only human activity I found was a few cyclists nursing beers at a sleepy cafe. I returned shortly to rejoin the group.

With the first leg of the excursion complete, we were already struck by the many layers of history found in the halls of Oranienbaum. In a single morning, we had confronted a Dutch-Baroque palace in the middle of Germany filled with evidence of a much more multi-sited story involving colonial wealth, dynastic ambition, and the sale and trade of children. Yet when we left the palace, we were again met with the emptiness of the region, part of yet another chapter of history. This present chapter of places left behind in the wake of German reunification has yet to be written.

Enslaved children are shadowy figures who rarely appear in archives and written documents. Our goal in traveling to Oranienbaum was to identify the strong links between material culture and colonialism to overcome this archival silence. While visually overwhelming, spaces like Oranianbaum contained frequently overlooked testaments to relationships of asymmetrical dependency and slavery. One of the potentialities of the research at the BCDSS is to follow in the footsteps of scholars of children and childhood to move beyond towering disciplinary boundaries. It is of paramount importance that we continue to incorporate different research methods, including engagement with public history, into our research practice.

The town square of Dessau.

Orange cats of Oranienbaum

Our team comprises researchers from the University of Bonn, including Giulia Cappucci (BCDSS PhD student), Maja Keller (BCDSS PhD student), James Harland (BCDSS Postdoctoral Researcher), and Julia Hillner (BCDSS Professor).

Our goal was to make the rich Roman history of the place where we are carrying out our research on this very period of history more visible. Not only did we wish to deepen our understanding of the local events of the ancient past, the mingling of the local population with the joined-up Romans, and the development of the settlement, but we also wanted to fulfill our scientific mandate: to bring science into society.

Remains of a Roman architectural element. The round-arched windows are filled with a piece of bronze artwork depicting Christian motifs. It is located in the centre of the city next to Bonn Minster and may have once belonged to a pagan sanctuary (Photo by the author).

From the walking tour to the website

The whole project started with a guided tour of Roman Bonn. The tour is offered to all members of the BCDSS, as well as fellows, visiting scholars, researchers from other institutes of the university and other interested people, but particularly to incoming students of the Master's program. For this reason, the well-frequented tours usually take place at the beginning of each semester. They are as well conducted in English to serve the international environment of the Center and the University. Lasting three hours or more, the convivial venture begins at the Roman street with replicas of tombs and votive stones in the Rheinaue park in the south, and concludes at the legionary camp in the north of the city.

From left to right: Maja Keller (née Baum), Prof. Julia Hillner, Giulia Cappucci on the Tour of Roman Bonn May 2024 (Photo by the BCDSS public relations team).

To bring the Roman past of Bonn to the attention of even more people and to make our acquired knowledge publicly accessible, the idea of the ‘World of Roman Bonn’ website came up.

A website seemed the ideal means to provide a wider audience with the vast amount of information collected in the research process and, at the same time, make the users able to access and use that information more independently and create their own tour of the Roman Bonn.

To begin, the team compiled the information that had already been used for the tour. As all team members are quite busy as full-time academics involved in teaching, collaborative projects as well as their own research, it wasn't easy finding a date for a joint meeting to get the project off the ground. And we could not have succeeded without the generous support of the public relations team at the BCDSS. The PR team was also involved from the very beginning, Without Buğra N. Duman's IT skills the website would never have become as multifaceted and thorough as it is now.

Visualization and structure

In order to make the website visit more entertaining and user-friendly, we used various forms of visualization. In the 'Historical overview' section, readers can find detailed information about Roman expansion in the Rhineland and the demarcation of the river Rhine. The main section is divided into various chapters that discuss social conditions, both in the military sphere and among the local and immigrant civilian population. A table concisely outlines the historical events. Images support the visualization of the past or depict the tomb and dedication stones, whose transcriptions and translations are provided at the bottom of the page. In addition, internal links offer the possibility of connecting content throughout the website while external links provide further reading material. We have also added a selected bibliography for readers interested in delving deeper into the presented topics. At the end of the main page, the personal cards introduce the members of the team to the reader, who can further discover their individual projects at the BCDSS through internal links.

Screenshot ‘World of Roman Bonn’-Website (26 August 2024). Interactive map.

The interactive street map, in which numerous places with traces of Roman history in the city of Bonn are marked, is a feature we would like to highlight. If you click on the markers, a small info box appears. You can find out even more about the respective location by clicking on a link, which opens a new tab with further information and images. Many of the images were taken directly on site. This feature allows users to access the Bonn's Roman past when walking through the city and easily verify if they are in the correct location.

Interested readers, including international visitors, can now explore the city on site and discover local history on the spot. The content of the website provides the necessary historical context to understand the historical relationships and developments in a profound and in-depth way.

Press release video produced by Buğra N. Duman.

Sharing our thoughts: "What was your experience working on the Tour of the Roman Bonn?"

Giulia:

„If you ask me to describe what the Roman Bonn tour has meant to me, the first definition that comes to my mind is a challenging opportunity. The project started when I had just moved to Bonn from Italy, and I first saw my involvement in it as a chance to know more about the town's history, and also broaden my scholarly perspective on the Roman past. Despite being an archaeologist specialized in the Roman Imperial Period and Latin Epigraphy, my studies had always focused on the city of Rome. Thus, the knowledge of events involving an important military yet peripherical site like Bonn (or Bonna, as the Romans called it) was scarce. Therefore, the first step was to delve into the ancient history of the city and its archaeological remains in books and articles.

This research also implied shifting my perspective from Rome, the center of the empire, to the provinces: I started my personal journey from the Urbs to Bonna, where different actors and dynamics were at play.

Along the Roman northern frontier, the pervasive military element stood out but was also surrounded by local people and immigrants from other parts of the empire, who lived and worked in close connection with the legionary fort. In this context, the themes of conquest, exploitation, complex forms of integration into Roman society, and resistance were deeply intertwined.

Votive stone as an example of local and Roman religious practices placed by slaves of the local commander (Photo by the BCDSS PR-Team).

After studying in the library, I also needed some “field work” to combine the notions acquired from the bibliographical research with the current topography of the city, the locations of the ancient remains, and the traces left by the ancient inhabitants …in the end, it would be a walking tour!

A preliminary excursion of the team a few months before the first official tour played a fundamental role and allowed me to become more familiar with the city, discovering hidden sites such as the Roman Baths beneath the Collegium Albertinum and beginning to figure the ancient landscape out.

On that occasion, the team also began its work: I remember we planned the tour structure and assigned each member a specific topic to deal with at a pub table, in front of a beer, which is always a good start. Since then, our coordination and cooperation have undoubtedly improved, despite our busy schedule, thanks to everyone’s effort and commitment.

However, this journey was not without difficulties. The major challenge I faced was communicating the research results to an audience with different academic backgrounds and historical knowledge, like the BCDSS members and fellows. Therefore, the presentation had to be clear and engaging, introducing topics such as Romanization or ancient slavery in a way that non-specialists would easily understand without concealing their complexity.

The life of Roman Bonn and its archaeological remains (from a tombstone to a fresco or a suspensura in the baths) had to be placed in the broader context of Roman imperial history and social history as exhaustively as possible.

This task can be extremely difficult for researchers like me, who have always talked to other fellow students or professors in the same field of study. However, transmitting the developments in the research to a wider non-specialist audience is a challenge from which scholars cannot shy away.

Knowledge only progresses and makes a difference when it becomes accessible and shared beyond our separate and small academic circles.

In this respect, the tour has been my test bed. Every time, I aim to convey not only the notions acquired over the years but also my critical observations and the passion behind my studies, paying attention to the audience’s reactions and trying to arouse their interest.

This approach has borne fruit despite my initial anxiety: an altar or a tombstone description has often led to compelling exchanges of ideas and discussions, historical comparisons, and in-depth remarks that brought to the fore aspects of Roman reality I had overlooked.

The website project partly stems from the same perspective: our team needed a platform from which the story we wanted to tell could reach more people independently from the tour. This aim led us to broaden our research further and include sites not touched by the walking tour, delineating even a more complete and multifaceted picture of the area in Roman times.“

Maja:

„Developing the tour and website of Roman was a very varied and complex project. As I offer a guided tour in German, I was already quite familiar with the content and concept of a guided tour. However, it was new for me to conduct the tour in a foreign language.

Nevertheless, it is particularly interesting - and at the same time obvious - that a globally spoken language such as English allows you to address people who have not only different cultural but also historical backgrounds.

We had to consider the fact that some participants were unfamiliar with Western Europe's ancient past, which is often not taken into account when studying history at a German universities and which is often taken for granted (keyword 'Eurocentrism'!).

However, since working with an international group of colleagues, students and fellows at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies and guiding them through the local German past made me increasingly aware of this topic.“

The cult of the Matronae, which spread throughout the Rhineland, awakens a fascination in me. The local religions of Germanic and Celtic peoples first became visible to us today through Roman epigraphy and Latin letters. There are a few people who still offer them symbolic sacrifices today (Photo by the author).

We and the entire team are proud to have created such a detailed and well-executed website. The project not only allowed us to gain a lot of knowledge for our research and to grow on a personal level, but also to feel part of a research community that was given the opportunity to realize its purpose of communicating what science has to offer.

In this blog post, I will reflect on this theme and discuss my experience attending the workshop as an intern at the MWF Delhi and a current MA student at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies.

A point of departure is two pieces of literature written by Prof. Conrad, What is Global History? (2016). This monograph is an interesting addition to the field. Building on the work of prominent scholars such as John Darwin, David Armitage and Sven Beckert, Sebastian Conrad's novel approach is to position the global “not as an object of study but, as a particular perspective” with a special emphasis on “global integration or structured transformations on a global level” (Conrad 2017, 62). He emphasises that global history is not a history of globalisation, but seeks to understand the extent to which world societies and regions were integrated into global systems. His idea of integration extends beyond connection.

To illustrate his perspective, Prof. Conrad offered a brilliant example during the workshop on the social history of ideas in a global context. In the early twentieth century, the ideas of Karl Marx and others traveled from London to Saigon and were absorbed by Vietnamese workers. Rather than a diffusion of ideas out of Europe, the globality arose from a comparable context in which working people realised their class consciousness and contemporary situations (see MWF DELHI 2024). In this case, the integration of knowledge transcended national boundaries.

This awareness of why a certain space and its actors finds a particular object of knowledge interesting rather than where it originates seems to me to be a crucial methodological-intellectual base for his approach to Global History.

Prof. Conrad’s understanding of global history reflects on the histories of past nation-states and explores connections between unexpected parallels of ontological spaces across the world, considering the reflection of geopolitical ties and the sense of history, experiences and marginalisation in the broader global history as a material anchor.

In his talk, he reflected upon issues of Western centrism and Eurocentrism in academic and historical studies. During another discussion in New Delhi, Prof. Conrad also mentioned that global history provides a space for historians to become critical global citizens in addition to being an alternative approach to history.

The kind of global history offer by Sebastian Conrad is not without its critics. He has been accused of providing an “oversimplified portrayal of these various perspectives to bolster his vision” (Willoughby, 2017). There is also a deep unease about the notion that the Anglo-American world was a forerunner of global history and thus left no room for the development of global histories in Asia, Latin America or Africa. The language we use to write global history tends to be English, which is highly problematic for many critics specially regarding the sources. In response to this warranted criticism, Conrad includes a subchapter on English as the lingua franca for academia in his book.

Nevertheless, Conrad makes a strong and convincing case for global history and the book remains highly relevant. Stressing the global as a perspective, which draws from a broad range of previous scholarship– comparative history, transnational history, postcolonial studies, multiple modernities and world-systems theory– global history has the potential to be applied in the composition of a cogent narrative. His ability to distinguish between globalisation, macro history and global history by drawing a distinct line in the spectrum of different approaches is one of the book’s most endearing features.

Though Prof. Conrad’s writings on the connection between ontological spaces, the reasons behind the transnational journey of a particular object of knowledge and how certain regional citizens (and non-citizens) encounter and engage with it have greatly inspired me, I am sceptical of the way Europe is privileged as a place where global models first came into existence.

For example, Conrad writes that “In non-Muslim South Asia, where a separate historiographical genre did not come into being until the colonial period, world-historical models were almost non-existent; and the same was true in Africa” (Conrad 20). Here Conrad demonstrates, perhaps, a blind spot. Two major works on this topic, Past Before Us (2013), by Romila Thapar, and Textures of Time: Writing History in South India 1600-1800 (2001) by Velcheru N. Rao et al., were published long-before Conrad's 2016 book.

A common question confronted by students in India in most undergraduate programs is the extent to which early Indians or those who lived till medieval period of India, lack a sense of history. This is also the matter that Romila Thapar attempted to address in depth in Past Before Us. Thapar concludes historical tradition or the way history has been recorded, interpreted and passed through generations during an earlier period epoch “includes…a consciousness of past events relevant to or thought of as significant by a particular society…and…the recording of these events in a form which meets the requirements of that society” (Thapar 2014, 4). Thus, it entails examining the past from the perspective of the present and more importantly, reconstructing the past to justify the present.

The book is packed with references to the legitimising power of historical tradition, which serves as the framework for most of Thapar's work on early Indian historiography. The views she puts forward resonate with postcolonial critiques of imperial agendas and relate to a certain postmodern worldview, where both of these perspectives acknowledge the existence of multitudes in both space and time, as well as the fact that several voices have spoken about, remembered and claimed the past. Her perspective challenges the meta-narratives, absolutes, universals and the singularity of history in different ways.

Simultaneously, there is a crucial distinction between these perspectives as well. In her argument, she addresses and defends the historical sensibilities of early Indian history (Chaudhuri 2022). Her writing is not an attempt to “expand the current definition of history to accommodate forms of writing prevalent in early India,” either (Thapar, 2014, 681).

Instead, her approach reflects the importance of diving into the nuances of empirical understanding and studying the emergence, transformation, various forms of shaping a society, analysing the passive-inter-active agents of the historical traditions and its role in a particular paradigm.

Following Thapar, I question whether we can still embrace global history within the nation-state paradigm, particularly in cases such as in India where for example global capitalism emerged as a result of imperialism and oppression and its history is different significantly from that of the history of capitalism in Germany or England. These important differences within studying the history would allow for a more nuanced investigation of how national shifts are interconnected with global dynamics and might shed light on the rich tapestry of our shared human experience and the interdependence. It also begs the important question about the precise geography of capitalism.

Returning to the critique that global historians do not engage enough with non-anglophone historiography, only someone deeply familiar with Indian sub-continental history – would know Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay or Rabindranath Tagore’s historical narratives about the transformation of the historical tradition in the sub-continent. In 1853, Chattopadhyay penned one of his mouse famouse essays. The text, which is titled “Bharat Kalanka,” (In Bengali, The Shame of India), concludes “Indians, never felt the need to unite or adopt the nationalism ideology like the Westerners did, before the British colonialism. The Indians were forced to forge their unity among themselves (which they never felt to forge it before) as a result of torture and socio-economic-psychological forms of imperial humiliation" (Chattopadhyay, 2007 (1853), 234-304).

Doing global history requires sustained attention to these deep fissures of national historiography, but until the period of colonial modernity, the global South was though by many not to have been globally significant enough to warrant such careful analysis. In the words of Sebastian Conrad, we have to acknowledge, even in the twenty-first century, the “industrialised and economically privileged” parts of the world continue to dominate global history. Though mostly in the United States and other Western countries and in East Asia (Conrad, 2017, 215).

To conclude, as a student of the BCDSS, I would say that the biggest takeaway from this workshop is a need for a more and inclusive engagement with a historical topic and its sources, but also who’s global history?

Or, more precisely, who can claim global history? Do these questions also apply to a global history of slavery? To answer this question, I believe we have to wait for the scholars from Global South and, especially, the south and south-east Asia, Africa and Latin America to come up with their global histories. Prof. Conrad is optimistic about this prospect. Indeed, he emphasized its importance several times during the workshop. For him, encouraging scholars from the global south and east contribute to these ongoing conversations is an example of opening the door for scholars from global south with ‘their’ global history.

Directly beneath that humble chapel and hub of missionary activity was the main tunnel of a dungeon that once housed hundreds of enslaved people during their final days on African soil before they were forced to make the daunting sojourn through various empires’ networks.

The chapel, which is integrated into the fortress, can be identified in this photo by its red roof and blue shutters. The large double door beneath the upper room is the main entrance to the ‘male slave dungeon’ (Photo by the author on 13. March 2024).

This photo of the same structure shows the main tunnel that leads to the ‘male slave dungeon’ (the dungeons were segregated by biological sex) underneath the worship space (Photo by the author on 13. March 2024).

Like other, more famous castles in the region, Cape Coast Castle has had many owners and served various purposes over the centuries. The Portuguese first established a trading post called Cabo Corso (‘short cape’) on this site in 1555. Initially, the trade was in gold and timber. Eventually, however, this location became one of many hubs for the Atlantic Slave trade.

In the centuries that followed the construction of the earliest buildings, the forts on this site were subsequently possessed by the Swedes, the Danish (that’s a complex story!), the Dutch (again, a complicated story!), and, after 1664, the British. Since Ghanaian independence in 1957, the castle has been under the care of the Republic of Ghana.

Under the leadership of the Reverend Thomas Thompson, the first Anglican missionary to Africa, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) arrived in Cape Coast in 1751. A mission arm of the Church of England, the SPG was tasked with caring for the spiritual needs of European settlers and converting non-Christian populations ‘in foreign parts.’ It operated out of the worship space pictured above.

In the stone-covered courtyard of the castle, just down a set of steps from the chapel and adjacent to the most direct path from the male slave dungeon to what is now called the ‘door of no return,’ the Reverend Philip Quaque (or Quacoe), the first African to be ordained in the Anglican church, lies in rest.

The grave of Rev. Philip Quaque (Photo by Author on 13. March 2024).

According to a curator of the castle museum, the following is a traditional ‘purification ceremony.’ On the ground of the courtyard, you will notice four white rectangular grave markers. The one that stands alone belongs to Quaque. (Video by the author on 13. March 2024).

As I already hinted, the castle faced multiple alterations and extensions over the years of its occupation by European powers. Indeed, after it was heavily bombarded by the French in the eighteenth century (during the Seven Years’ War), the heavily damaged structure was almost completely rebuilt. As a result of these and later alterations, one of the few ventilation shafts for the dungeon led to the floor of the structure that had been the worship space since at least 1766.

Whether as a byproduct of haphazard construction or by intention, according to one representative of the Ghana Museums & Monuments Board, “the opening in the floor of the chapel allowed the enslavers to keep a listening ear tuned toward the slaves beneath them while in there.”

Irony of tragic ironies, this seemingly innocuous hole, which I was not able to photograph due to ongoing restoration work, may also have allowed the enslaved people to listen to their enslavers as they sang hymns and prayed prayers to one of whom Paul of Tarsus said, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1).

As my friend and colleague knew well, her fundamentally theological question about whose prayers God heard in such situations is not one that historians, even those who study the history of religions, can answer based on their field of competence. Later, she told me that she did not ask it because she was searching for an answer, be it historiographic, theological (both of us are also ordained ministers in Christian traditions), or otherwise.

Rather, by posing the question, she was giving voice to the startling cognitive dissonance we, like many before us, experience when we encounter such profound examples of the entanglements between slavery, colonialism, and the history of Christian mission.

The enduring legacies of these historic connections are on ready display in the modern cityscape surrounding the castle today. From the former Governor’s balcony of the castle, one can see the cathedrals of three of the historic denominations that traveled to Ghana via European colonial expansion and alongside the slave trade.

The closest church building is Christ Church Cathedral (Anglican). The white church with a green roof is the Wesley Methodist Cathedral, and the beige church with a red roof in the distance is St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Cathedral (Photo by the author on 13. March 2024).

Indeed, Cape Coast Castle is far from the only structure in Ghana that bears startling witness to the links between Christianity, empire, and slavery.

Just up the road from this site, in Elmina, one can visit the comparatively well-known Elmina Castle, which was erected by the Portuguese in 1482. At Elmina Castle, then known as Castelo de São Jorge da Mina, the Portuguese also established the first Roman Catholic Parish in West Africa. When the Dutch later took over the castle, they, too, set aside a space for worship. That space is thus perhaps the earliest Dutch Reformed church to be established in the region.

Here, we can see the ‘Portuguese Church,’ where Roman Catholic services were held until 1637, as it appears today. To the left (from the perspective of the photographer) was the ‘male slave dungeon,’ and to the right were two cells used to punish those who physically resisted enslavement (Photo by the author on 13. March 2024).

Unlike at Cape Coast Castle, the ‘door of no return’ at Elmina Castle, which opens onto the same courtyard as the main entrance of the Portuguese Church, was not the place from which enslaved people were loaded on ships for transport across the ocean. It was a torture chamber in which especially resistant enslaved people were placed until they died. This, the enslavers did as a deterrent for resistance by others (Photo by the author on 13. March 2024).

The ‘Dutch Church’ at Elmina, which stands atop a portion of the ‘female slave dungeon’ (Photo by the author on 13. March 2024).

One of the few remaining design elements within the Dutch Church, this relief, which quotes Psalm 132:11 in Old Dutch, reads, “For the Lord has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his habitation. This is my resting place forever” (Photo by the author on 13. March 2024).

This view from a cell in which ‘female slaves’ dwelt looks out upon a small secondary courtyard that holds memories of abuse, assault, and torture. The Dutch church is located directly above it (Photo by the author on 13. March 2024).

The decorated double windows at the top lead to the Dutch Church. Records show that women who resisted sexual exploitation by high-ranking colonial officials were chained to large iron balls and forced to remain in this courtyard under direct sunlight as punishment. This would have been their view of the church (Photo by the author on 13. March 2024).

After this lengthy excursion to the Cape Coast, it is worth explaining why my colleagues and I traveled to Ghana. We were there for the Fifth Annual World Christianity Conference, held from 11-15. March 2024. The conference, which is organized by Princeton Theological Seminary (PTS) and the Overseas Ministries Study Center (OMSC), was hosted by the Department for the Study of Religions at the University of Ghana (Legon).

View from the portico of the plenary hall at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research at the University of Ghana, where the main sessions of the conference took place (Photo by author on 11. March 2024).

The PTS/OMSC World Christianity Conference has emerged as a premier global forum for world Christianity scholarship.

Though it has various definitions, the phrase ‘world Christianity’ or ‘world Christianity studies’ usually describes an “interdisciplinary approach to the academic study of Christianity as a worldwide, intercultural, contextually embodied, and historically shaped tradition” (Smith, WCSAD Concept Note). As an approach or framework for analysis, world Christianity calls for a paradigm shift in how Christianity is studied. The discourse thus fosters new “methodological, theoretical, and disciplinary perspectives that shed light on the diversity of Christianity(ies) over time, space, localities, and positionalities” (WCSAD Concept Note).

Since 2023, various members of the University of Bonn’s Faculty of Protestant Theology and the BCDSS have participated in the conference. In January 2024, several Cluster members and friends established the World Christianity Studies and Asymmetrical Dependency (WCSAD) Working Group to foster ongoing dialogue about the conceptual links between world Christianity as an approach and asymmetrical dependency as an analytical concept. From the start, we have also worked on shared projects with the organizers of the WC Conference.

The theme of this year’s conference was “Revisiting Women and Gender in World Christianity.”

In response to the ‘gender gap’ that pervades much of World Christianity scholarship, the conference invited papers that would explore questions like, to quote a few, How are emerging theologies, spaces, discourses, female bodies, agency, and polities increasingly gendered and negotiated within World Christianity? Which theoretical and methodological tools does the field offer to increase comprehension of ritual, political, economic, and social roles often associated with different cultural contexts worldwide, including diasporic communities? How is power gendered and negotiated in patrilocal and matrilocal sociocultural contexts and milieus within which global south and diaspora Christianities thrive today?

After the opening ceremony, the renowned Kwok Pui Lan, Dean’s Professor of Systematic Theology at Candler School of Theology of Emory University, gave the opening Gerald H. Anderson Lecture. Her talk, which was primarily historiographic, spanned various contexts. It explored themes related to gender in mapping Christianity’s history in China, to the involvement of churches and theologians in healthcare advocacy around HIV and AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s, to the recent ‘theologizations’ around what she called the “feminization of migration.”

Prof. Dr. Kwok Pui-Lan, one of the world’s leading constructive theologians, delivers her lecture at the 2024 WC Conference (Photo by the author on 11. March 2024).

The paper sessions explored a diverse array of topics. While many scholars presented on matters related to Ghana and West Africa, the regional and temporal foci of the presentations spanned the gamut.

Diverse presentations also evidenced what I would consider the ‘big three’ trajectories in world Christianity scholarship: 1) history of Christianity(ies), 2) social science analysis of Christianities, and 3) constructive theological reflection that centers the perspectives, approaches, and insights of studies in world Christianity.

The first two approaches are primarily empirical, with the third being axiological. Of course, we should also note that a prominent characteristic of world Christianity scholarship, at the WC Conference and elsewhere, is a conscious ‘blurring of the lines’ between these approaches. Thus, for many conference attendees, they are not mutually exclusive categories.

Dr. Gina Zurlo, Yang Visiting Scholar of World Christianity at Harvard Divinity School and Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, dropped a bombshell in her plenary lecture. Dr. Zurlo presented portions of her groundbreaking book ‘Women in World Christianity: Building and Sustaining a Global Movement’ (2023). This sociological and demographic work provides “the first quantitative dataset on gender in every Christian denomination in every country of the world.” The results of this study are truly stunning.

Photo taken during the presentation (Photo by author on 11. March 2024).

The Women in World Christianity Project is upending more than a few preconceptions about the formative impact and self-empowerment of women within the world Church.

The conference also held a plenary in honor of Mercy Amba Ewudziwa Oduyoye, a Ghanaian Methodist theologian, ecumenist, poet, and director of the Institute of African Women in Religion and Culture at Trinity Theological Seminary in Legon. In 1989, she was among the founders of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, which continues to shape ecumenical theological discourse around the world.

I had the pleasure of meeting Oduyoye, whose work I first encountered as an undergraduate student of religion and philosophy many years ago (Photo by the author on 14. March 2024).

As I reflect on my all-too-brief experience in Ghana, a few impressions stand out. Regarding the conference, I cannot help but applaud the organizers and hosts for their successful attempt to ‘put their money where their mouth is’ when it comes to creating spaces where historically marginal voices within the churches and world Christianity scholarship can be heard.

For the first four years after its establishment, the conference was held in Princeton. The 2024 conference marked the first attempt to host the event outside of North America. Moving forward, the conference organizers plan to rotate between ‘home base’ and elsewhere. Next year, the conference will be in Princeton, and after that, somewhere else, and so on.

As I was one of the few scholars who presented on a theme related to gender and sexuality, I was also left with another impression. I am keenly aware of how much farther we must go (both academically and in terms of the inclusion of silenced voices) before world Christianity discourses can engage constructively with intercultural questions around sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics.

Robust academic and theologically liberative discussions around the diversity of gender and sexuality in human experience are alive and well in many (unexpected!) places in the world Church, but, in general, our scholarship has yet to reflect this grassroots reality. What a loss that is!

One of many group photos taken at the conference (Photo credit: Princeton Theological Seminary)

In the future, world Christianity scholarship and conferences dedicated to strengthening the field should also create more space for engagement on questions related to the history and enduring legacies of slavery and other forms of strong asymmetrical dependency.

As we traveled between the Elmina and Cape Coast castles, several Ghanaian members of our group shared that they grew up hearing things like, “Yes, what happened was really horrible [i.e., the enslavement of millions of people], but at least we got the gospel out of it all.” For many of the brilliant young scholars of religion I encountered at the 2024 WC Conference, this summary of Christian history in places like Ghana no longer satisfies. Indeed, it has never been truly satisfying.

According to one PhD Researcher at the conference, “It is time for the Church and the churches to atone; to tell the stories (some good, some bad, all messy) of the church and slavery, and abolition and all that.” Within World Christianity discourses, therefore, it is time to devote more energy to the consideration of slaveries and dependencies past and present. Our field could emerge as an epicenter of reflection on the role of the church in supporting, subverting, combatting, and collaborating with the institutions and people who engaged (and continue to engage!) in practices that undermine human dignity. In this endeavor, we can also help uncover or retell stories of resistance and resilience within and beyond this global faith tradition we scrutinize and, in many cases, embrace.

Scholars in our field could provide invaluable contributions to the process of mapping the topography of slavery and asymmetrical dependencies across time and space.

Many of the projects that could emerge from such an endeavor would undoubtedly leave the question, ‘whose prayers did God hear?’ – those of the enslavers in plastered churches or the enslaved in bare stone dungeons – to the constructive theologians in the field. Yet, most would probably acknowledge that existential questions like this echo through the waves of history, are woven into the threads of societies past and present, and endure in concrete experiences of what, to quote Burns, who used the gendered language of his time, we may call ‘Man’s inhumanity to man.’

In March 2024, Sierra Leonean-born American writer and PhD Candidate at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, Rama Santa Mansa, re-introduced Lysbeth to the world with the publication of her gothic novella Portrait of Lysbeth by Lingeer Press. I deliberately use the word "re-introduced" because Lysbeth was first introduced to the public in two separate seventeenth-century archival records. In both documents, Lysbeth Anthonijsen’s voice is represented by narratives imposed on her by the voices of powers who decided how she should be remembered. In 2009, however, Susanah Shaw Romney, in her well-researched journal article “Intimate Network and Children’s Survival in New Netherland in the Seventeenth Century”, attempted a reconstruction and interpretation of Lysbeth Anthonijsen’s life story alongside other ‘orphan’ children in seventeenth-century New Netherland within the limits of the archives. Her article concludes by raising looming questions about Lysbeth’s future; questions about which the archives remain silent.

It is probably this silence that inspired Mansa to write a historical novel based on this seventeenth-century woman of New Amsterdam. Mansa adopts a novel approach to telling the story of Lysbeth. Rather than follow what the archives want us to believe about Lysbeth, Mansa writes an alternative history for a woman whom her oppressors and initial biographers would rather posterity remember as a thief and arsonist.

Head of a Black woman with a lace kerchief hat, Wenceslaus Hollar, 1645. Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library.

In Portrait of Lysbeth, Mansa gives a voice, face, and agency to Lysbeth. Through her imaginative story, the author sheds light on wider issues of the time and place Lysbeth lived.

The story is set in 1676 in New York, a former Dutch colony (known as New Netherland) later seized by the English. Lysbeth Luanda, a second-generation free-born African woman of Kongolese-Soninké ancestry, is recommended by her Magister, Doctor Avraham Henriques, to the New York’s High Sheriff for a coroner’s assignment to investigate the murder of three women in Sleepy Hollow, an isolated Dutch village in the English colony of New York. Despite the High Sheriff’s initial refusal to appoint an African woman to such a job, he eventually gives in.

An important literary device employed by Mansa in writing her novella is her use of several flashbacks through which readers are shown past events, thereby giving depth to the character of Lysbeth and others in the book. As a gothic novella, there is a prevailing atmosphere of mystery, terror, suspense, and the supernatural.

Portrait of Lysbeth is divided into four parts and explores several themes, with each one having a potential for further discussion. They include slavery, bonded service, apprenticeship, freedom, racism, poverty, power relations, kinship, white privilege, misogynoir, African cultures, memory and spirituality, Christianity, interracial romance, maternal wisdom, colonial origins of the city of New York, genocide, treatment of Orphans, fictive kinship, the role of animals and nature, time and temporalities, in addition to many others. Some of these themes stand alone, while others overlap.

By describing how Lysbeth’s mother arrived in New Netherland from Senegambia aboard a Spanish slave ship heading for Cuba only to be captured by a Dutch privateer, Mansa refers to what historians have already revealed about the means by which the Dutch acquired slaves for New Amsterdam (p. 32). Lysbeth’s father had been trafficked from Luanda as a young boy. Both individuals met in New Netherland (p. 32). In another instance, the author narrates how the Governor of New Netherland had envisioned his colony as a slave depot for all British and French America (p. 27).

Another type of unfreedom that Mansa reveals in her book, which was, in many cases, particular to free-born children in New Netherland who had lost their parents, was the possibility of becoming a ward of the Orphan Chamber. “This civic organisation was responsible for and had the authority to settle parents’ estates, appoint guardians for the children to whom they were bonded” (p. 26). Lysbeth was such a ward, for her bonded service lasted five years.

The subject of freedom is also brilliantly addressed by the author. In her novella, Mansa demonstrates the various ways the enslaved in New Netherland could have acquired freedom. Lybeth’s mother slipped into freedom on arrival in the colony because “she was too sickly to be sold” (p. 32). For others, it involved possessing freedom certificates, for which a group of formerly enslaved people once petitioned William Kieft. Surprisingly, the freedom certificates were granted (p. 33). What is especially interesting from the perspective of asymmetrical dependency research, and for the progression of the author’s narrative, is the ‘half-freedom’ that, in practice, was granted by these certificates (p. 33). The freedom that was granted was ‘half-freedom’ because the newly ‘unslaved’ African community lived in poverty; some worked the same jobs as their enslaved counterparts and had a low social status; very importantly, too, they had no collective wealth to call their own (p. 33). For scholars of slavery, asymmetrical dependency, and freedom, it is significant to understand the limits that were placed on freedom in the contexts envisioned by the novella. It is not enough to admit that freedom certificates or manumission automatically granted freedom to the enslaved; we must also explore the lived experiences that followed upon legal emancipation The writer also demonstrates how the community of ‘unslaved ’ Africans disturbed the social structure of the colony because of the social contradictions that emerged from their new-found freedom (p. 27).

Moving away from content, it is important to point out the author’s brilliance and courage in weaving a convincing fictional story out of historical sources. As mentioned in her acknowledgements, Mansa had to read over a thousand pages of secondary sources to write this book. Another point worth mentioning and which constitutes a challenge to historical fiction readers is how to demarcate between factual and fictional events and people. While the writer does not tell us which events or people are factual and which are not, as a historian, I would affirm that the general thrust of most events and the experiences that form the basis of most of the characters that feature in her book can be corroborated within historical sources. This is why, to avoid doubt, particularly to readers who are not aware of such histories and may not want to break the flow of reading to engage in intermittent research, a glossary of true events and people should have been included at the end of the book.

Before concluding, I would like to say that I really enjoyed reading Portrait of Lysbeth. It was well written and interesting while also introducing me to events of which I was previously unaware, such as the colonial origins of New York City. Secondly, despite being a work of historical fiction, I appreciate the author’s ability and ingenuity to breathe life into a forgotten life. To echo Mansa, indeed, Lybeth’s life mattered (p. 123).

Ultimate questions about life, including those of religion, proliferate beyond beliefs about dogmas, doctrines, and sacred texts: they traverse alongside processes of politicization, polarization, and institutionalization. Within the confines of history, religious communities, norms, and discursive patterns have developed within societies; they often employ power, including State power, to achieve their aims.

In many contexts, dominant religious orthodoxies have determined how history has been constructed, propagated, and archived. For a few of the many examples that can be drawn from the experiences of the authors of this blog, we might consider the complex power dynamics involved in the composition of the Hindu canonical text Rig Veda or, in the Aksumite kingdom in Ethiopia, the acceptance of Christianity in the 4th century AD, all the way down to modern history.

In these stories and in many others, careful reflection on historical developments reveals that questions about religion are inseparable from concerns about power, asymmetry, and dependencies.

Though religion is often neglected as both a nexus around which academic discourse can take place or an impulse that can drive collective organization for social action (liberative and otherwise) in contemporary ‘secular’ academic discourse, religious questions, ideas, and communities have long been and remain matters of ‘ultimate concern’ (to quote the German Theologian, Paul Tillich) for billions of people around the world.

The matter of religious freedom is thus a key talking point in many discussions of historical and contemporary asymmetrical dependencies.

This basic revelation was both the impulse behind and key takeaway from the Bonn/Ewersbach Block seminar, which was held from December 7th to 9th, 2023, at the Theologische Hochschule Ewersbach. The seminar was organized by Rev. David Brandon Smith (BCDSS PhD Researcher), Prof. Dr. Matthias Ehmann (Professor for Mission Studies and Intercultural Theology, TH-Ewersbach), Rev. Dr. Matthew R. Robinson (Director of the Department of Intercultural Theology at the Faculty of Protestant Theology in Bonn), Jakob Lange (Researcher at TH-Ewersbach), and Laura Schäfer (Researcher at the University of Marburg).

The ‘Bonn Crew’ sets out for Ewersbach early on December 7th (photo by David B. Smith)

The seminar welcomed five masters-level students from TH-Ewersbach, five students in the MA in Ecumenical Studies Program at the University of Bonn, and five students from the MA in Dependency and Slavery Studies program at BCDSS. Adiam Tadele Abadi, Jin Luo, Prateeti Mukhopadhyay, Ishita Sarkar, and Jaiannantpreet Singh represented the BCDSS.

Prof. Dr. Matthias Ehmann leads a tour of the Allianz Mission offices, housed at TH-Ewersbach (photo by David B. Smith)

The three-day seminar offered a sanctuary for open-minded academic dialogue on religion and religious freedom. Participants engaged in spirited debates and posed thought-provoking questions, fostering an atmosphere of intellectual exploration by acknowledging bias. These discussions prompted reflection on fundamental concepts such as the definition of “religion” and nuanced understandings of “freedom” within varied contexts.

After lunch, the first session of the seminar began with an ‘ice breaker’ activity in which participants shared their current understanding of religious freedom and related issues (photo by Matthew R. Robinson)

Primarily due to the expertise of the instructors, Christianity emerged as a focal point of discussion, inviting participants to interrogate its complexities and challenge prevailing stereotypes. Through lectures and presentations, we delved into the significance of religion and religious practices in daily life.

In the first full session, we focused on religious objects. The talk by Laura Schäfer, Researcher at the University of Marburg, “The Concept of Religious Freedom and Dealing with the Religiously Different: On Archival Research with Religious Materials in Marburg,” introduced the participants to the idea of “religious object sensitivity” that should be practiced when handling culturally sensitive objects in museums. Such objects may include human remains, ceremonial objects, symbols of power, holy texts, and weapons of war.

Ms. Laura Schäfer, Researcher at the University of Marburg, gives the opening lecture of the seminar (photo by David B. Smith)

Ms. Schäfer honed in on an essential practice of exercising religious freedom in institutions like museums and other heritage sites. She emphasized that since objects often possess spiritual significance, they must be handled within a conceptual and practical framework that acknowledges the importance of freedom of religion or belief.

Next, the first of several lectures by Rev. David B. Smith on religious freedom and belief in Europe and the United States focused on how institutionalized religion has often been intricately connected to the exercise of State power. He thus explored the historical role of various institutionalized churches as State-aligned actors.

An intriguing aspect of one of his lectures was how he demonstrated that religious freedom has a “long and complicated history.” As he argued, “Some key themes in the religious discourse of Western Europe and the United States are built upon historically grounded concerns over freedom of conscience and debates over the complex relationship between Church and State, religious establishment, and disestablishment that spans several epochs.”

According to Rev. Smith, religious freedom discourse, as articulated by international law (in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example), is “a historically grounded and contextually shaped ideal that emerged as a result of, not apart from, complex interactions between religion, politics, law, and social networks. Thus, it always involves a negotiation of competing interests…”

Indeed, religious freedom discourse, in all of its cross-contextual complexity, “does not follow a linear progression from unfreedom to freedom (or vice versa); It exchanges and negotiates alternative (but entangled) dependencies” (Smith, Lecture II).

Rev. David B. Smith lecturing on the historical development of religious freedom discourse (photo by Matthew R. Robinson)

Brimming discussions spilled over beyond the scheduled sessions and continued during breaks and informal gatherings. An academic exchange was indeed crystallized on the first day. The day wrapped up with Prof. Dr. Matthias Ehmann’s session on “International Development Policy, Religious Freedom, and Asymmetrical Dependencies.” During that session, we continued our discussion of how questions related to religious freedom policies are contextual and fluid. The effectiveness of foreign political pressure campaigns in contexts where religious freedom is most notably violated was discussed, and the need for them to be more realistic than idealistic was emphasized.

Prof. Ehmann raised important questions about the assumed “secularity” of State power as a result of postcolonial understandings of religion in the context of democratic rule.

On the second day, we were fortunate to have the company of Frank Schwabe MdB (German Federal Commissioner for Global Freedom of Religion at the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development) and his team via Zoom.

Seminar participants on day two with Frank Schwabe, MdB (photo by TH-Ewersbach)

Before opening the floor for a town hall-style discussion of religious freedom, Mr. Schwabe introduced the German Federal Government’s Third Report on the Global Status of Freedom of Religion or Belief, which was ‘hot off the press’ at that time.

The report, which locates the German commitment to religious freedom within its broader concern for universal human rights and democratic values, reflects the German government’s interest in “tapping the potential offered by beliefs and religions and wants to strengthen cooperation with religious actors all over the world, for example, as part of crisis prevention and crisis management, as well as the transition to sustainable development” (pages 1 and 2 of the English summary).

In this way, the report is very much in line with related efforts of the United Nations and other international bodies, including, for example, the ‘Faith for Rights (F4R)’ Framework Initiative, which seeks to galvanize support for human rights protections in faith communities around the world.

The report is quite innovative, at least for an official document, for three reasons. First, for its engagement with the use of religion in political discourse, for example, regarding long-standing intra-Orthodox conflicts brought to the fore after the most recent Russian invasion of Ukraine. Second, for its emphasis on the rights of peoples described as indigenous, as well as indigenous beliefs and spiritual practices that have been historically overlooked in discussions of the universal human right to freedom of religion or belief.

Without diminishing the other points, Mr. Schwabe was most excited about the report’s emphasis on “religions’ contribution to sustainable development.” Before taking up his current post, Mr. Schwabe served in various positions and on various committees of the Bundestag with responsibility for environmental policy.

His passion for sustainability showed through as he proudly asserted, “This is really the first [official] document that I know of which links religious freedom and sustainability so clearly” (from contemporaneous notes of attendees).

In the discussion that followed his more formal presentation, Mr. Schwabe spoke openly and honestly about the complexities involved in international conversations on religious freedom and human rights. He shared about his international travels and the need for government actors to exercise self-criticism while sticking to their commitment to holding up a mirror to regimes that perpetually abuse human rights, including the right to freedom of religion or belief.

In our brief experiment with a free-church version of ‘monastic’ living, nestled among the mountains, we shared wonderful meals in the TH-Ewersbach refectory each day. Thankfully, we didn’t have to take a vow of silence (photo by Matthew R. Robinson)

After lunch on the second day, more presentations and lectures followed. These talks asked questions about the extent to which religious freedom can be exercised. In international law, is religious freedom an absolute right, or does religious freedom need to be limited in some situations (for example, when religious leaders use their positions to justify or promote violence)? What happens when religious freedom discourse is used by a majority to oppress a minority community or vice versa? How can claims of religious freedom be (mis)used as weapons to set up legal restrictions for communities or classes that have been historically oppressed?

This portion of the seminar, which was led primarily by Rev. Dr. Matthew Robinson, inspired participants to contribute to positive change in their spheres of influence, fostering a collective commitment to creating a world where religious diversity is celebrated and the rights of all individuals to practice their beliefs freely are respected and protected.

This segment also offered participants a chance to reflect on their own understanding of religious freedom in both technical and existential terms.

Rev. Dr. Matthew R. Robinson lectures on religious freedom and dependency in a global society (photo by David B. Smith)

Ishita Sarkar, a co-author of this blog post, along with the two other attendees quoted below, recalls from her commentary during this session,
“A particular interest was the realization that different human rights can sometimes conflict with each other in religious contexts and how religious prejudices can be justified under the guise of freedom of speech and expression. These discussions led us to ponder the overarching question: ‘What should the relationship between international development policy, religious freedom, and attempts to address enduring asymmetrical dependencies be?’ ” (Matthew R. Robinson, 2023).

Prateeti Mukhopadhyay writes, “In the concluding session of the second day, we participated in group activities and discussions to tailor a working definition of the term religious freedom, which was countered with its very ambiguity. My personal understanding was that there is no one definition of religious freedom; rather, it should be highly contextualized and should embrace not only all religious groups but also acknowledge the persistence of social hierarchies. Identifying the power dynamics should be the elementary step to adjourn from an essentially universalized or Eurocentric perception of the same.”

Adiam Tadele Abidi, also a co-author of this blog post, remarked, “Reflecting on the discussions and insights from the seminar, I’ve come to see religious freedom as more than just a matter of individual belief or practice. It’s about fundamental human rights, allowing everyone to be who they are without fear of discrimination or prejudice. It’s about embracing the richness of our diverse world and respecting each other’s beliefs and practices. Religious freedom is beyond religion itself; it’s about liberty, acceptance, and understanding. By recognizing and accepting each other’s differences, we can mitigate conflicts often intertwined with religious tensions. For me, religious freedom is about accepting one another in our complexity as human beings.”

Rev. Dr. Matthew R. Robinson introduces the ‘promenade-ology’ exercise (photo by David B. Smith)

This high-level ethical and theoretical reflection was concretized by a ‘Promenade’ exercise, for which participants were divided into groups of three (one person from each program). The groups discussed pre-assigned readings that problematized and complexified various aspects of religious freedom discourse. The readings summarized case studies that were drawn from around the world and from across multiple faith traditions. After walking together across the snow-covered campus of TH-Ewersbach, the groups came back together and presented key themes from their discussions to the larger cohort.

The snow-covered campus of TH-Ewersbach (photo by David B. Smith)

Dormitories of TH-Ewersbach, complete with a pool hall and hangout space, where the TH-Ewersbach team hosted the Bonners after the work was done on the first day of the seminar (photo by David B. Smith)

The readings and promenade discussions explored the history of Christian mission, ecumenism, and human rights discourse in Egypt, the role of religious freedom in the treatment of minority religious groups in India, the complexities of religious research and new possibilities for historical research in China, religious freedom and the fight for marriage equality for LGBTQIA+ people in the United States, Native American accounts of ‘spiritual genocide,’ the relationship between religious freedom and the advent of liberation theologies in Latin America in the second half of the twentieth century, and a critical analysis of the use of religious freedom as a soft power heuristic in contemporary diplomatic practice.

The third and final day of the workshop continued the constructive ethical reflection prompted by Dr. Robinson’s talks. After breakfast, Rev. Smith created a space in which the participants could experience the challenges that emerge at the intersection of historic and enduring dependencies, an ethical or legal impulse to address them, and the actual process of developing policy proposals in governmental settings.

Rev. Smith facilitated an hour-long ‘Policy Lab’ in which participants were introduced to the ‘problem-solving method’ as it is commonly employed in ‘macro’ (policy level) social work practice. Participants were divided into groups and asked to identify a policy ‘problem’ related to religious freedom in a particular community that they needed to address.

Rev. David B. Smith leading a ‘Policy Lab’ discussion on the final day of the seminar (photo by Matthew R. Robinson)

The groups then had five minutes to present their proposal to an imagined government official. The practical policy-making challenges involved in addressing the complexities of matters related to violations of religious freedom became readily apparent.

After the conclusion of the policy lab, the group piled into a series of vehicles and made its way to the Coptic Orthodox Monastery of Kröffelbach (St. Antonius). The long drive through a beautiful region of Germany provided yet another formative opportunity for participants to get to know one another, ‘talk theology,’ and expand our conceptual horizons.

Seminar participants gathered after a discussion with a leader in the monastic community about religious freedom and Coptic Orthodox belonging in Germany (photo by author)

We were welcomed by a leading monk of the St. Antinous Cloister who shared about the unique experiences of Coptic (Egyptian) Orthodox Christians, not only in Egypt but in Germany as well.

As a minority expression (Coptic Orthodoxy) of Germany’s majority faith (Christianity) affirmed by people who would usually identify as either first, second, or third-generation migrants or expatriates, this visit provided an encounter with lived religion and a reminder of the need to uphold freedom of religion or belief in pluralistic societies.

Regarding the visit to the monastery, Prateeti Mukhopadhyay reflects, “What appealed to me was the intent of this visit, where we were asked to situate ourselves beyond a solely academic space to a religious institution and critically discuss what religious freedom entails in a strictly religious place and how it is ensured among the practitioners and the preachers. This attempt to take the dialogue beyond theories and discussions made me understand the need for present-day academia to transcend beyond ideology in a more tangible and practical way to ensure changes at the grassroots level.”

Ishita Sarkar recalls, “Even though I’m not a religious person, our visit to St. Antonius Coptic Orthodox Monastery in Kröffelbach was indeed a breathtaking experience for me. To enter the church was pure bliss as we were graciously welcomed by the people of the church community and engulfed by the beguiling sanctuary walls adorned with paintings that meticulously illustrated stories from the Bible and the life of Jesus; the unique Coptic Orthodox cross that looked very different from the popularly known Christian cross was an interesting discovery for me. Eventually, we sat down inside the church, and the calmness, serenity, and smell of the incense made our little learning session through questions and answers all the way more worthwhile.”

After a quick lunch break at a doner place in a nearby village, we hastened back to the TH-Ewerbach, had a brief ceremony at which we received participation certificates, and then packed up. Before long, we were on the Uni Bonn bus and heading back to campus.

Bonn/Ewersbach Block Seminar on Religious Freedom and Dependency participants after receiving their certificates (photo by TH-Ewersbach)

The academic space that we were a part of in Ewersbach last December taught us to acknowledge and appreciate diverse perspectives and to navigate discussions with sensitivity and empathy. The seminar was a bold yet very much-needed experiment. We learned to comfortably express our views while also respecting the boundaries of others and acknowledging the academic character of the space. The seminar also provided an opportunity for participants to challenge preconceived notions and stereotypes surrounding religion, religious studies, and theological research.

All in all, this seminar opened questions rather than aiming to come to a conclusion and steered us towards further retrospections. From archival sources like the Edict of Milan to comparatively modern confessional texts like the Barmen Declaration, we were exposed to the evolution of religious freedom as a theological, ethical, legal, and praxiological concept throughout the history of the West and beyond. Indeed, something worth every bit of applause was the usage of primary source materials by the speakers to conjure their claims.

Through our case studies and engagement with philosophical reflections from around the world, we also gained a much deeper appreciation for the entanglement of religious freedom and asymmetrical dependencies in social history, international politics, development policies, law, and diplomatic practice.

The Bonn/Ewersbach Block Seminar on Religious Freedom and Dependency was educationally enriching, socially eye-opening, and politically awakening, but free from unchecked biased opinion or influence. As we reflect on the seminar experience some months later, we are reminded of the importance of continued dialogue and action in promoting freedom of religion or belief and fostering a culture of acceptance and understanding.

A view of Port Arthur (photo by author)

Port Arthur perfectly encapsulates the paradox of modern Australia as a place of stunning beauty with a deeply problematic origin story.

The former penal settlement is one of the most significant convict sites worldwide, but the surrounding landscape of gently rolling hills and picturesque coastline surely adds to the appeal for visitors from near and far who flock here annually. On a recent trip to Australia, I was lucky enough to be one of those visitors. For this month's contribution to the BCDSS Blog, I'd like to share my reflections on the place and its significance to my research on the global history of childhood and asymmetrical dependency.

As part of a two-year DAAD-UA project Child Slaveries in the Early Modern World: Gender, Trauma, and Trafficking in Transcultural Perspective (1500-1800), I was fortunate to return to Australia this year. I am still here as I write this blog post.

This second visit has been more open-ended, and aside from reading a paper at Monash University's Medieval and Renaissance Studies Seminar Series, I have spent most of my time working on my dissertation at the state Victoria Library in Naarm (Melbourne). With libraries closed for the long Easter weekend, I decided to venture to the island state of Tasmania (aboriginal name Lutruwita) to see some of the incredibly rich convict history.

Sitting on the southern tip of the Tasman Peninsula, Port Arthur was established in 1830 as a "secondary prison" for convicted British criminals; that is, it was the place where the colonial government sent its hardened criminals and convicts, the repeat offenders.

For readers who may not know, Australia was initially colonized by the British as a means of expelling hundreds of thousands of convicts from the British Isles. The colonization period began in 1788 and continued well into the nineteenth century. Convicts who failed to adjust by committing crimes while serving a sentence on the mainland were sent to Port Arthur, which soon developed the strictest security system in the British Empire and became a key site of carceral innovation.

Port Arthur was effective because escape was impossible. While Port Arthur was the hub of activity, this penal colony consisted of the entire Tasman Peninsula, which was heavily guarded by a "dog line" at the isthmus of Eaglehawk Neck. The dog line consisted of dogs chained to posts to keep watch for convicts and were even placed on platforms in the water to prevent escape by sea.

Today, the open-air museum is staffed by enthusiastic experts, many of whom descend from the residents who inhabited the area after the penal colony was shut down in the 1870s. In a way that is similar to the Fort of Louisbourg, New Brunswick, and discussed by fellow BCDSS PhD Researcher Julia Schmidt in a recent contribution to this blog, Port Arthur is a major part of the local community and narrates visitors through parallel stories of history and historical preservation. A more recent tragic chapter of the place is the infamous 1996 massacre, which led to a complete transformation of the nation's gun policy. A fountain commemorating the 35 victims of this massacre is one of many layers of heritage found at Port Arthur.

A Memorial Garden Reflection Pool, where visitors are invited to reflect on the tragic mass shooting that took place at Port Arthur in 1996 (photo by author)

I found the exhibits not only up-to-date with the current thinking about the complexity of convict history but also challenging many widely held assumptions about criminals today. Before venturing into the open-air museum, visitors are directed to a gallery where they are given background information about Port Arthur and the global history of convicts.

A major theme carried forward in this orientation is a challenge to visitors to ditch over-simplified tropes that convicts were being sent to Port Arthur for petty crimes (stealing a loaf of bread, for example). Instead, the exhibits challenge visitors to understand them as complex human beings with a range of motivations and experiences.

A graphic puts the history of place into a global perspective (photo by author)

The broader history of Port Arthur is far too complex to address in a short blog post, so I'd like to turn to just a few key features of the site that struck me on my visit.

When I initially planned my visit to Port Arthur, I did not expect to find a strong link between the site and my research on the history of childhood and asymmetrical dependency. Nevertheless, a major component of the penal settlement at Port Arthur was Point Puer Boys Prison. Point Puer was across the bay.

Port Arthur operated as the first juvenile reformatory in the British Empire. While most boys sent to Point Peur were aged 14-17 years, many as young as nine years old were sent to Point Puer.

It was believed that separating young children from convicted adults would protect them from criminal influence. Young girls were also transported to Tasmania but were incarcerated at a women's factory in Hobart, where they also carried out essential forms of labor like producing textiles and other essential commodities.

A view of Point Puer Boys Prison from Port Arthur (photo by author)

Many of the children sent to Point Puer were orphaned boys from the growing slums of London, Manchester, and Birmingham. Historians know a great deal about the conditions of life at Point Puer from an 1843 report by Benjamin Horne to then-governor Sir John Franklin. In one passage, Horne described how,

"In the sleeping apartments, lights are kept burning during the night, and they [the boys] are constantly watched by Overseers, but the efficiency of this system must depend wholly upon the moral character and vigilance of these Officers. Sometimes, the Overseer relaxes his vigilance and falls asleep, and if he is not a favorite with the boys, they put out the lights and invert and empty a night tub over his head and shoulders. This trick, which is called ‘Crowning the Overseer,’ occurred once during my visit."

Tricks could easily turn violent; two months after Horne submitted this report, an overseer was murdered by two boys.

The reason I came to Australia in the first place was to collaborate with fellow early career researchers for a project focused on the history of child slavery in the early modern world.

My visit to Tasmania was intended to be an excursion, but discovering Point Puer fostered connections in my thinking about the history of childhood from a global perspective, which I had not previously imagined.

Near the conclusion of my research trip to Barbados in 2023, I began to read through records created after the period of slavery ended. One of the initiatives taken by Barbados elites and described in the colonial assembly minutes from the late 1830s was to organize a working plantation school so that newly emancipated children would receive an education tailored specifically to the needs of the colony. Reading outside my main base of materials was fruitful, if not deeply troubling.

Only by looking at records created after emancipation did I begin to realize how ideas about the sociability of children had been in the British Caribbean during the period of slavery. Zooming out in space as well as time during my visit to Point Peur, I'm realizing there is a need to think even more broadly about children, empire, and colonialism. Point Peur was established from the year slavery was abolished in the British Empire, and I refuse to think that is a mere coincidence.

Using the lens of asymmetrical dependency as an alternative to the binary of slavery and freedom would be extremely helpful in thinking about how children were broadly important to imperial projects.

In the meantime, I will get back to writing my dissertation!

A view of Port Arthur from the Boys' Prison at Point Puer (photo by author)